Community planning
Community planning is about how public bodies work together, and with local communities, to design and deliver better services that make a real difference to people's lives.
It drives public service reform by bringing together local public services with the communities they serve, and provides a focus for partnership working that targets specific local circumstances. Partners work together to improve local services and to ensure that they meet the needs of local people, especially those who need the services most.
Community Planning Partnerships
A Community Planning Partnership (or CPP) is the name given to all those services that come together to take part in community planning. There are 32 CPPs across Scotland, one for each council area. Each CPP focuses on where partners' collective efforts and resources can add the most value to their local communities, with particular emphasis on reducing inequality.
CPP plans
CPPs are responsible for producing two types of plan to describe their local priorities and planned improvements:
- Local Outcomes Improvement Plans, which cover the whole council area
- Locality Plans, which cover smaller areas within the CPP area, usually focusing on areas that will benefit most from improvement. Each CPP will produce at least one Locality Plan and some CPPs will produce many – there is no fixed number
Community participation
Community participation lies at the heart of community planning, and applies in the development, design and delivery of plans as well as in their review, revision and reporting. Consultation is no longer enough - CPPs and community planning partners must act to secure the participation of communities throughout.
CPPs should organise themselves in whatever way they think will help them to work well. As part of this, they should make sure that everyone involved is clear about what they have agreed to do and who is responsible for doing what.
More information on community planning:
- Part 2, Community Planning of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 sets out new community planning duties
- community planning guidance, containing a series of links to other supporting materials
- Community Planning: plain English guidance
- Community Planning Partnerships: contact details
- the CPP Support portal includes links to online tools and information provided by national improvement agencies (including Education Scotland, Improvement Service, NHS Health Scotland and NHS National Services Scotland) and national programmes (Workforce Scotland) to support CPPs and others to share innovative and interesting practice, learning, developments
Place Directors
Place Directors are senior civil servants (directors or deputy directors) who volunteer for the role alongside their day-to-day responsibilities. Each Place Director represents Scottish Government in one of Scotland’s 32 local authority and Community Planning Partnership areas.
More information on Place Directors and how to contact them is available.
Getting involved
Any third sector or community organisation that is keen to participate and engage with the community planning process, may wish to contact their local third sector interface. Third sector interfaces support effective community planning by building links between voluntary organisations and the local CPP.
A list of all the third sector interfaces in Scotland, along with their contact details, can be found on Voluntary Action Scotland's website.