Local Government Information Unit: "A Guide to Neighbourhood Planning"

Link to LGIU web site

"Neighbourhood planning will give communities the opportunity to organise themselves into forums that can prepare neighbourhood plans and put forward neighbourhood development orders to secure planning permission for developments they support.

"The coalition government says that neighbourhood planning is central to its ‘decentralisation, localism and Big Society agenda’. The Localism Bill sets out what neighbourhood planning is, and how it should work in practice. Through neighbourhood planning, the government says that communities will be able to:

• choose where they want new homes, shops and offices to be built 
• have their say on what those new buildings should look like 
• grant planning permission for the new buildings they want to see go ahead.