The Women’s Manifesto for Just Neighbourhoods is being developed through a collaboration between Rights Community Action and Community Led Action and Savings Support (CLASS). It brings together the experiences of women and communities, alongside expertise from different organisations, to set out what just neighbourhoods should look like and what needs to change.

Why we need a Women’s Manifesto

The planning system does not work for women and their neighbourhoods in England. Successive planning reforms have reduced public participation and local democratic accountability, and marginalised community concerns in favour of deregulation intended to increase the number of homes being built. This has not succeeded.

Social rent, safe spaces to play, energy-efficient homes, community-owned energy, local green spaces, active travel, access to locally grown food, local health services and education are all public goods that the planning system could do much more to secure.

Planning has long been characterised by the private sector as a problem. It is now also a problem for communities because it does not deliver what they need. We need a different agenda that refocuses planning on what it was originally created to do: deliver public benefit to people and places in a democratically accountable and participative way.

The evidence is clear. Women and children are among those worst affected by the intersecting cost of living, housing and climate crises. It is time our voices are heard.

How did we get here?

The principle that communities should have a meaningful role in planning is not new. The 1969 Skeffington Report said that local plans should be subject to public scrutiny and debate and advocated a community-led approach. The Aarhus Convention, launched in 1998, established international commitments on access to information, public participation and access to justice in environmental matters.

Measured against these aspirations, the land use planning system in England falls short. Recent reforms have further restricted opportunities for communities to be heard and weakened local democratic accountability.

The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 embedded a “no right to be heard” approach in the examination of spatial development strategies and placed further restrictions on the process for consenting major infrastructure projects. The Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 also changed how environmental impacts are assessed.

Changes to national planning policy risk overriding local plans, while the national scheme of delegation has moved more decisions away from elected planning committees and into decisions made by officers. At the same time, national policy still does not include a target for social rent or give local authorities sufficient powers and funding to deliver the homes communities need.