Parish Plans

The Government wants local communities to have more control of their own lives, to say what they want in their own community or parish and to work with other organisations to get it done.

Community and Parish Plans give an opportunity for everyone in your community to make themselves heard. They provide a way for you to say if you want more open spaces, more effective public transport, affordable housing, better access to health care, a chance to buy local produce at local shops and to choose how your community helps everyone in it to relax and make the most of their social and leisure time.

The Toolkit is here to help you undertake your Community or Parish Plan and to ensure that it is robust and inclusive, so that it is effective in achieving your needs and acts as an influence on the strategic policies within your local authority and partner organisations.

It has been produced with the input of community development workers from the Rural Community Action Network (RCAN) and from some local authority district councils.

The RCAN community development workers have been helping rural people to produce Parish Plans since they were introduced in 2000. They have a wealth of knowledge and experience about what works when developing a Parish Plan.

View the Parish and Community Planning Toolkit