T8: Social Infrastructure

Sustainable communities are places where people want to live and work now and in the future. They meet the diverse needs of residents, are sensitive to their environment and contribute to a high quality of life. They are safe, well-planned, and offer equality of opportunity and good services for all.

Place-making and the new spatial planning system make the provision of social infrastructure central to the delivery of successful places and communities. The successful planning and delivery of services requires an understanding of how services are provided and by who, the likely needs of the new community, and collaborative working to ensure that the right blend of services are available to local communities in the right locations and at the right time.

This paper provides information to assist in planning for new social infrastructure as part of large scale development projects and addresses:

• The scope and definition of social & community infrastructure;
• The role of social infrastructure in the context of strategic planning policy and the focus on spatial planning, including the interrelationships between the Local Development Framework, Sustainable Community Strategy & Local Area Agreement and role of the Local Strategic Partnership;
• Key issues and the guiding principles that should be considered when planning for social infrastructure and mechanisms to draw social infrastructure stakeholders into the process;
• Approaches to gathering relevant evidence such as population profiling and impact analysis; 
• Using the information collated to contribute to sustainable community building; and 
• Specific guidance focussed on key social infrastructure components, such as health, education, leisure, emergency services, community development and faith.

It is important to recognise that each of the separate social infrastructure components are guided by separate strategic policy, involve different stakeholders and are governed by differing regulatory regimes. It is not the purpose of this part of the ATLAS Guide to comprehensively address each of these in detail, but to extract some key guiding principles to aid and inform their consideration as part of the evolution and delivery of large scale proposals.