Whole Valley Planning - A guide for communities - Introduction

This Whole Valley Planning project was to explore the feasibility of whether land management could be integrated across a whole valley, based on community led issues.

The outcomes of this work take the form of a series of guidance sheets. These are to help empower communities to influence their own futures and to  provide a framework for public bodies to work better with them. A whole valley planning approach can look at the relationship between community needs, development and land uses in the long term as well as assessing “bigger picture” changes such as climate change and peak oil and their impacts. Whole valley planning can be picked up through all the forms of community led planning (as outlined in guidance sheet 4).

Increasingly planning for places - whether land, resources, people or development, in rural areas like the uplands is working at the whole valley or whole water catchment scale. This scale is closer to the everyday lives of people than larger public administrative boundaries and also allows ‘a joining-up’ of related issues to provide better solutions to problems or to meet local needs.

There is much relevant guidance and advice available and we have highlighted good examples here in Cumbria and from further afield. So before you get started do a bit of homework and do not be afraid to ask communities who have already done some whole valley planning about their experiences.

View/download 'FLD Whole Valley Planning, a guide for local communities' (pdf)