Communities

Many councils across London have established Community Forums to evaluate and assess local policy and direction.  These contain representatives from the areas residents and they seek to represent the community as a whole.  Councils also use these groups as a sounding board for initiatives and ideas.

Some boroughs have begun to use selected members of these Forums to evaluate planning proposals seeking approval, providing a community opinion on these prior to the Council making a final decision.  Whilst not recognised as a statutory function, they nonetheless provide a useful and important perspective, and one that often goes untapped elsewhere.

In order to make the most of this, council’s need to ensure that the selected residents from the Forum are sufficiently aware of the principles and purpose of design, the language used and the objectives sought.  Open City has developed a programme of training for residents (Residents’ Design Workshops) which delivers this understanding to them and which then allows them to form a confident, effective and informed response to the issues raised by development proposals.

If you are a neighbourhood representative/champion, local authority councillor or officer, and would like to find out more about how you or your colleagues can participate in the Residents Design Workshops, please email us.

Our previous successful work in Barking and Dagenham is set out here.

 

...