Locality and community: Towards a vehicle for community-based decision making in rural localities in England

Recent widespread discussion including policy statements by government suggest that more authority should be devolved to local communities to make decisions about the rural localities in which they live. The paper evaluates existing instruments, including village appraisals and village design statements, against the criteria of subsidiarity, integration and effectiveness, to determine whether they can be developed further to assist local communities, in collaboration with key institutions, to contribute more actively to preparing proposals for their localities. Finally, the paper sets out indicatively the attributes that would need to characterise a new community-based instrument for local decision making in rural areas.