Rural Planning in the 2020s

This is a response to the Summer 2021 RTPI tender Rural Planning in the 2020s by a consortium comprising expertise in fields including rural planning, environmental governance, transport and housing. Half of the team are MRTPI or FRTPI, and between us we represent seven RTPI-accredited Planning Schools across all nations of the UK and Ireland and several regions of England. We have a wealth of experience in undertaking research and delivering projects related to rural planning, including several previous commissions for the RTPI. That experience includes extensive, effective and impactful partnership working with stakeholders from the public, private and third/environment sector. Many of these projects are politically sensitive, demanding the highest standards of ethical behaviour. Our response to the tender includes a reflection on the breadth of issues which could fall under the scope of rural planning, and an approach which seeks to ensure focus on the most significant of these for rural communities and professional planners. We propose to draw on the expertise of the researchers in our team to produce a series of thematic scoping reviews, which will then be the subject of 12 online workshops with key stakeholders across the regions and nations of the UK and Ireland. These workshops will in turn feed into a review undertaken, with our experts from those different nations, to assess the success of existing policies and frameworks to address the issues faced by rural communities. We will then identify 16 case study locations, again reflecting the diversity of experience across the UK and Ireland, drawing upon engagement with communities themselves. All of this work will be consolidated into a report, a briefing document and other outputs for the important audiences identified in conjunction with the RTPI.