Many projects featured in this guide were developed through a form of Community Led Planning, particularly the regeneration of Dawlish and the redevelopment of the Maltings in Wells-Next-The-Sea. Meanwhile, Flintshire Action Plan shows community led planning can work on a county-wide level.


Action for Market Towns has been championing Community Led Planning and Solutions for a long time with. The projects included in this guide are just a handful out of hundreds of examples of how communities have worked with supportive local authorities to map local issues and develop tailored solutions.


Strengthening society Small towns are rightly known for being strong cohesive communities. However, they are not free from social problems by any means. In fact, social problems are often more pronounced in small towns, sometimes as a result of their isolation or meagre local authority budgets in rural areas.


The challenges facing some of the towns that have entered the awards include many of those more typical of urban areas such as unemployment, disaffected young people and vandalism. There are also additional problems including poor local transport links.


Imaginative solutions developed by award entrants this year include a geo location game to develop young people’s skills, a community bus to help tackle rural isolation and community orchards to clean up derelict open space.


Environment and Culture Once again there was a strong environmental theme to this year’s award entries. Some projects sought to reduce local people’s fuel consumption, while others were huge capital schemes to make buildings more energy efficient. Projects like Crewkerne’s pedestrian link were aimed at making a difference to the immediate urban environment in a way that would benefit locals enormously.


The Environment and Culture section also included several arts and heritage projects such as a scheme to regenerate a town with a new state of the art cinema and a number of festivals and fairs. These events included arts festivals that succeeded in uniting the hitherto rival Norfolk seaside towns of Cromer and Sheringham – even if it is for only a couple of weeks each year.


To access full case studies, go to the AMT website www.towns.org.uk under ‘Good Practice’


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