Guidance and exemplars for creating LDFs now available in the Plan Making Manual
The traditional ways of communicating complex instructions are changing. Not only is the speed of electronic systems quicker, but the very culture is changing from top down to a two-way dialog.
This culture change is demonstrated by the new town planning guidance - the Plan Making Manual - just published by the Planning Advisory Service (PAS) at the Improvement and Development Agency.
The Plan Making Manual accompanies the revised Planning Policy Statement 12. It has been produced by Communities and Local Government and delivered via the Planning Advisory Service website. The manual brings together council experience, useful advice and guidance in producing local development frameworks.
When councils work on producing their planning framework, the Local development framework which is the vision for their area, they can use the new on-line plan making manual to help them. Within the first two weeks councils and others downloaded 60,000 pages by some 6,000 users.
More importantly the guide has the facility for councils to be able to comment and respond, commenting on the content and suggesting improvements, citing themselves for case study material and offering alternative ways of looking at issues.
Ed Watson, PAS Programme Manager, said ‘when Communities and Local Government (CLG) asked us to work with them to produce the plan making manual they wanted something that had all the relevant information in one place, included self-penned case studies and would allow the content to be regularly refreshed and updated. It should also allow two-way conversations with practitioners. In the past planning guidance might have only been revised every three or four years. The really exciting thing now is that updates will be every three to six months and that authorities and others are starting to drive change by showcasing their examples of good practice, suggesting improvements to the content of the guidance and that this can be used by the whole sector’.
The manual is freely available to authorities, as well as developers and residents.
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