Empowering Communities
Communities need to thrive – many parishes and market towns have Neighbourhood Plans already. There is little support available to develop them and no support to defend them when attempts are made to ignore or ride roughshod over them. The Conservative Government’s White Paper ‘Planning For The Future’ will further lead to a developer led planning process. Labour Norfolk wants a community led planning process.
A Labour Norfolk will support and strengthen the Neighbourhood Plan process – providing support to empower communities and put our weight and resources behind making them a reality and defending communities against inappropriate development.
Communities need basic amenities to be viable. Norfolk Labour’s ‘Revaluing Rural’ initiative includes support for communities wanting to protect their own shops, pubs and local amenities. We will help with expertise by creating a team dedicated to help communities take control, a start up fund to pump prime schemes designed to bring amenities under local and cooperative ownership and soft loans to help fund capital schemes and purchases. The disposal of Council assets will actively consider alternative community uses which achieve wider a social benefit. Norfolk County Council cannot be a hindrance to community empowerment, it needs to be an enabler of it, on the side of our communities in Norfolk, not against.
We will
- Create a Neighbourhood Planning Team to empower local communities
- Encourage a community led planning process, not a developer led one
- Allocate resources to enable community ownership of community assets such as the local shop or village pub and revise the Council’s assets disposal policy