We all want to create places which enable people to live healthy and fulfilling lives. Achieving this means providing the spaces, places and infrastructure that people need to live well and which enable the natural world to thrive. It also means empowering people to have a say on how their homes and neighbourhoods are created and managed, providing opportunities for active citizenship. This powerful combination is captured in the concept of long-term stewardship, which is at the heart of creating great places.
Many places remain committed to the long-term stewardship objective and are learning how to make this a reality today.
The Heart of the Matter project has sought to capture and share the emerging lessons from those places tackling long-term stewardship, to inform updates to existing TCPA guidance and provide additional assistance to those places seeking to make long-term stewardship a reality.
This report explores these lessons through the following:
- An overview of the wider context and debates around stewardship including current policy
- An overview of the challenges local authorities are facing in relation to stewardship of new communities and sharing lessons from this
- Case studies from places that are working on stewardship models
- Sharing learning from long-established stewardship organisations, including places with Schemes of Management, and those established through the New Towns programme.
This report is intended for practitioners and explores both policy and technical detail. This report should be read alongside the TCPA’s existing guidance, which provides an introduction to long-term stewardship and some of the models available today.
