Community Participation in Spatial Planning: Exploring Relationships between Professional and Lay Stakeholders

Abstract

The literature that explores relationships between lay and professional stakeholders in community participation generally suggests that professionals perceive five main difficulties in working with lay people: it is unnecessary within democracies; lay people lack expertise; they are not representative; there is commonly a lack of trust, and decision-making is made more complex. In respect of spatial planning in South West England, from survey evidence these difficulties are not so apparent except in respect of complex decision-making. It is likely that the variation between the literature and the survey is influenced by the longer heritage of community participation in the spatial planning process in England, than in most other local authority services.

Key Words:

• Community participation
• local government and public involvement in Health Act 2007
• knowledge
• equity
• trust

Acknowledgements

The research from which this paper derives was conducted with the help of a grant from the National Empowerment Partnership. The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily represent these of the Partnership and any errors or omissions remain the responsibility of the author. Gratitude also is expressed to Professor Stephen Owen of the Countryside and Community Research Institute, for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes

This is a term used in New Institutional Economics to mean the full range of policy tools and instruments, both formal and informal and across public, private and community sectors, that are used to bring about change. It is defined thus to be distinct from ‘organisations’, which are the groups of people that use intuitions to achieve certain outcomes.

This is an explicit but unfortunate computer metaphor: whilst open source computing is that which allows open access to the development of computer programming, it is also the means of transmission of computer spam, viruses and other infections.