These sessions are for anyone in the Scottish borders who is involved in community-led planning. They are a collaboration between Borders Community Action (BCA) and Scottish Borders Council (SBC), with BCA convening the sessions and SBC providing technical support and some of the presentations. They replace the SBC “placemaking” peer webinars.

There will also be space for networking and updates on how things are going in your area. The sessions are held online, 6-8pm.

Thursday 15 August session

Theme: project funding, Council budgets and plans

Register here

The themes for this network session are project funding, Council budgets and plans which may (or will in some cases) interact with your Local Place Plan. We have four sections to the evening, three presentations with Q&As and one which will be an even more interactive session in which you will have a chance to input into the next Council budget.

• Prof. Jane Bower, Chair of the Campaign for a Scottish Borders National Park (SCIO), will present their bid for a National Park in the heart of the Southern Uplands, if the bid is still live by then.
• Shona Haddow (Economic Development) and Gillian Jardine (Communities and Partnerships) will be joining us from Scottish Borders Council (SBC), to give an overview of all the funds which the council hold for distribution to communities as grants, particularly those which might be suitable for community-led projects which form part of a Local Place Plan or Community Action Plan.
• There will be an interactive session in which you can voice the priorities that your communities have for the places you live, which will feed into SBC’s planning for their next annual budget.
• Debbie Armstrong (SBC Planning) will give a presentation on the Local Development Plan and the National Planning Framework (NPF4), both of which LPPs must “have regard” to, helping us to become more familiar with these plans.

 

Thursday 6 June session

Theme: Priorities to projects

The theme for this session was about moving from community priorities to identifying suitable projects to include in a Local Place Plan or Community Action Plan. The recordings from the presentations are available below:

Langholm, Ewes, Westerkirk & Canonbie Place Plan - Denis Male and Donna Hislop (Langholm Alliance)

Lochalsh Community Action Plan and Local Place Plan -Susan Walker (Kyle & Lochalsh Community Trust)

Borders Good Food Plan - Karen Birch (Borders Good Food Partnership)

Proposed active travel route from Tweedbank to Eyemouth- David Langworth (Borders Greenway project)

 

Thursday 25 April session

This session featured presentations on the process for registration of Local Place Plans and on tools for community engagement. Recordings are available below:

Registration of Local Place Plans - Jess Houghton (SBC Planning Department)

Tools for community engagement - Anne McNeill (local community engagement specialist and Vice-Chair of Duns & District Community-led Planning Team)