Neighbourhood planning (NP) as enabled by the 2011 Localism Act in England has precipitated a considerable literature discussing its potential, limitations, and likely shortcomings referenced against government rhetoric and the reporting of initial experiences of the process. This paper provides an overview of the current literature on neighbourhood planning and sets out how it has been received and practiced across England drawing on empirical evidence. The extent of take-up and the experience of those involved first five years of neighbourhood planning and to consider how community-led planning may be designed and used following operational principles of inclusivity, capacity-building and adding value.

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Neighbourhood planning was the first volunteer-led statutory planning tool to be created in the UK. Whilst it has provoked debate and critique covering numerous practical and theoretical aspects (Wargent and Parker, 2018), little attention has been paid to the actual experience and motives of the volunteers who spend their leisure time by volunteering to prepare a plan. Given the range of leisure activities that have been shaped in the context of a neo-liberalised policy environment we add to longstanding debates concerning the political nature of leisure and how neo-liberal policies require, and exploit, volunteer time and input while claiming to offer forms of empowerment. Qualitative data derived from neighbourhood plan volunteers is presented here to highlight the political work of neighbourhood planning, thus responding to calls to extend the analysis of the political in and through leisure (Rose et al, 2018). It is argued that neighbourhood planning pushes the boundaries of what can be legitimately asked of volunteers and expected in terms of delivering policy outcomes.

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This paper examines the practices of localism that are emerging in local planning authorities’ (LPAs) responses to neighbourhood planning (NP) in England. It argues that a lack of coherence within the localism agenda has enabled LPAs to rearticulate and resignify key concepts, with three discernible practices of localism and responses to NP emerging: the deflective, the reactive and the integrative. The LPAs have a critical role within the process and employ a range of technologies of government to govern the conduct of groups shaped largely around the role afforded to NP within their local plan.