Strathard Local Place Plan
A coherent consensual foundation for rural development, land use, community action, climate action & local place planning.Between 2018 and 2023, facilitated by CCN, residents across the four wards of Strathard — a glen and community council area in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park — undertook the most ambitious and comprehensive community-led planning process in rural Scotland. Through the co-creation and iterative renewal of three Community Life Plans (CLPs) for Aberfoyle, Kinlochard, and Stronachlachar & Inversnaid, they have achieved and maintained a shared, holistic agreement about what is important in their place: its assets, vulnerabilities, priorities, aspirations and progress.
The Life Plans were created through wide participation, intergenerational engagement — from primary schooler upward — and consensus, achieving levels of direct local involvement ranging between 60–95% of all residents in each ward. They provide each ward with a unique, living, whole-systems model specific to their own community, defining fundamental criteria for wellbeing, sustainability and resilience, all rooted in lived experience.
Together, these Life Plans have provided the common foundation through which partners are able to engage in constructive, integrated discussions about the future of the Strath. The outstanding example is the Strathard Framework, a pioneering initiative led by the Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park, Local Planning Authority. Developed between 2020 and 2022 — before Scotland’s Local Place Plan legislation came into force — the Strathard Framework may be the first, and possibly the only, rural planning guidance in the UK to integrate land use, development planning and climate-resilience priorities into a single, partner-endorsed framework grounded in community consensus.
Setting out a shared routemap to sustainability to 2040, this groundbreaking project was enabled by the clarity and legitimacy provided by the Community Life Plans. With holistic foundations rooted in the realities of place and lived experience, it has allowed partners to hold complex cross-stakeholder conversations — integrating climate adaptation, natural flood management, woodland creation, transport, dark skies and local economic sustainability — constructively and transparently. The strength and breadth of the CLPs meant that partners could see where their aims aligned, where tensions existed, and how each issue connected to wider ecological and social systems. Quarterly multi-agency meetings, now running for several years, continue to use this shared canvas to guide work on the ground and maintain momentum in delivery.
In 2023, the three CLPs were formally brought together and certified by the National Park Authority as the statutory Strathard Local Place Plan. To provide a structured bridge between the Community Life Plans and national policy (NPF4), the Local Development Plan and the Strathard Framework, CCN supported the wards to co-produce an overarching summary document. The result is a Local Place Plan that captures both the distinctiveness of each ward and their shared principles, themes and priorities — including community sustainability, natural environment restoration, infrastructure resilience, housing need, visitor management and appropriate development zones. It offers a coherent, indivisible, resident-led lens for future decision-making and provides a clear holistic guide for authorities, developers and stakeholders seeking to work in alignment with the community’s long-term vision.
The Strathard experience demonstrates how a single grassroots process, undertaken with care, rigour and true democratic intent, can underpin multiple strategic outcomes. A well-designed resident-led Life Plan does not simply describe a place; it transforms what becomes possible within it. It creates the enabling conditions for collaboration that would otherwise remain invisible, and provides a model of subsidiarity, partnership-working and whole-place planning which influenced, and is now reflected in, national policy. The Strathard Local Place Plan stands as a testament to what communities can achieve when given the means to define their own future and work as equal partners in shaping it. It also demonstrates how many different plans and aspirations — community action, climate resilience, local place etc. — can be enabled in a single approach and founding document when it begins with a deep, shared appreciation of place and grows from there.
Our Community Life Plan captures everything residents have shared and agreed is vital about the place we live. The levels of participation and consensus gives it real heft and legitimacy, and has motivated grassroots projects in ecological assessment, flood management, community energy, dark-skies protection, and more. Most importantly, it weaves our aspirations together into a single, holistic, living framework. This enables it to evolve in response to changing needs and circumstances, serve any purpose we or our partners need it to, while always protecting and enhancing what is unique to our place and essential to our long-term prosperity.
Community Life Plans are owned by our communities. They provide a united voice for what is important to the broader Strathard Community, and our vision for the future.
The aspirations for community-led land purchase are rooted in the significance and value of the local cultural, historical and natural heritage, all of which are reflected strongly throughout the Community Life Plans as economic assets as well as key factors that contribute to sense of place.
Over many years the Park Authority has collaborated with the Strathard communities on place planning and community development initiatives.
We value the volunteer resource and partnership-working that has contributed to the Community Life Plans, the Strathard Local Place Plan and our own Strathard Framework (aiming to guide land use change and development).
Process
1. Creating the Strathard Community Life Plans (2018–2023). CCN worked with each ward to design and deliver a resident-led Community Life Plan (CLP), employing an adaptation of a radical Indigenous approach to grassroot community regeneration. A locally representative workgroup shaped the engagement strategy, ensuring every resident was reached multiple times and that young people were fully involved from the outset.
Through a series of iterative in-person community meetings, residents explored the history and essential character of their Places, identified the Important Things that defined them, agreed Core Principles to guide future decisions, and developed four interdependent Themes for Action. At each stage, outputs and agreements were validated with all residents, including those unable to participate directly, and finalised by consensus.
In Aberfoyle ward — the last and most populous to be engaged — the process was adapted for Covid with a digital-first approach and in-person community meetings at the tail end when social distancing permitted, achieving the same depth and legitimacy by a different route.
2. Refreshing and aligning the Life Plans (2022-2023). Three years after the two original CLPs, CCN returned to refresh them. Conditions had changed significantly — with major shifts in visitor patterns, local economic pressures and post-Covid impacts.
The updates ensured the CLPs reflected these new realities and demonstrated why they must remain living documents: flexible, relevant and responsive, so that statutory planning and local development processes (often tied to cycles of ten years or more) do not drift out of step with a dynamic context and shifting on-the-ground needs and priorities.
3. Supporting community representation in the Strathard Framework (2022-present day). When the National Park Authority began developing the Strathard Framework — planning guidance that would sets out a shared vision for land use, development and climate resilience in Strathard to 2040 — CCN supported the Community Council and Community Trust to represent the CLPs effectively.
We helped prepare contributions, clarify shared themes and ensure the community’s holistic description of Place was expressed clearly and faithfully throughout workshops and partner discussions. This support enabled residents to participate as equal partners in shaping the shared vision for Strathard to 2040, while maintaining alignment between their consensual models and aspirations for their Places.
CCN continues to support community representatives in quarterly multi-agency meetings, helping ensure that the Life Plans and Local Place Plan remain active reference points for monitoring progress, resolving emerging issues and guiding long-term delivery across the Strath.
4. Supporting anchor organisations in co-production of the Strathard Local Place Plan (2023-2024). With the introduction of Local Place Plan legislation, CCN worked with anchor organisations and representatives from all three wards to bring their updated Life Plans together into a single statutory Local Place Plan.
CCN facilitated the identification of common principles, themes and priorities, resolved ward-specific nuances, and supported the co-creation of a coherent Strathard-wide structure by consent. From this, CCN prepared the overarching summary document that formed the bridge between the CLPs, NPF4, the Local Development Plan and the Strathard Framework. The proposal included preparing and providing the authority with a GIS layer, which detailed important zones and assets agreed by the communities, to add to their spatial mapping.
We also prepared the documentation and engagement materials to support the Strathard Community Council and Community Trust in consulting neighbouring Community Councils, elected members and other statutory partners. CCN assisted with drafting engagement emails and incorporating feedback where appropriate, ensuring the process remained transparent, rigorous and consensus-based.