Step 4: Evidence

Once you have your Neighbourhood Area designated, your Neighbourhood Planning Forum will need to talk to lots of people locally to find out what’s important to them. This is what will determine the policies you include in your NP (which must also work within what is realistic and possible from an NP in general).

You’ll need to gather evidence to back up the ideas that the community wants to see.

Locality has resources to help with your evidence gathering:

• How to write and conduct social surveys to gather data for your Neighbourhood Plan

• Achieving well-designed places using Neighbourhood Planning

• Making Local Green Space designations in your Neighbourhood Planning

• How to assess and allocate sites for development
  

• How to undertake a Housing Needs Assessment (HNA)

• How to consider the environment in Neighbourhood Plans.

Do take advantage of all the support available. Your ongoing relationship with the Neighbourhood Development and Support Unit (NDSU) at Birmingham City Council (BCC) will be useful at every stage. The team will help you work out who else you need to connect with in your local area to ensure you include as many voices as possible in your ideas and aims. BCC’s Planning department will provide data too. All of this will help you develop your NP with full awareness of and in consonance with other plans for your area.

You can find more ideas for networking here. 

If there are actions your community wants to take which can’t be achieved through an NP, NDSU may know of alternative mechanisms for you to try.

Further guidance from Locality for the evidence-gathering stage:

• Engaging with your community in a meaningful way

• How to use social media to engage your community. 

Tips for holding consultation events 

One Neighbourhood Planning Forum volunteer in Birmingham said it’s a good idea, when you’re holding consultation events, to be clear what your purpose is and who is behind the NP.

“Three or four people who came to our consultation thought this is a chance to complain about the council”.

If people do attend your events to raise gripes about the local area, don’t worry. This could be a valuable starting point for discussions about community action.