Guidance

Advice note 1 — establishing a clear starting point for community engagement (HTML)

Published 2 September 2025

Applies to England

About the Homes England community engagement advice notes

Homes England is committed to community engagement.

Homes England knows how important it is to effectively engage with, and listen to, communities.

At Homes England, we aim to capture locally relevant ideas and suggestions that reflect opportunities for transformation and regeneration within communities. By engaging meaningfully with local communities and stakeholders, we can identify what matters most to them. This knowledge enables us to shape projects that deliver lasting social value outcomes, benefiting the community both now and in the future.

We consider supporting other public sector bodies in defining their approach to community engagement and social value a key part of our role. The community engagement advice notes have been created by Homes England to share ideas and suggestions with local government and their partners.

The advice notes aim to promote meaningful community engagement and support the understanding and delivery of ‘locally relevant social value’, linked to the planning, housing and regeneration development process.

There are 2 advice notes:

• advice note 1 — establishing a clear starting point for community engagement
• advice note 2 — using community engagement to understand and deliver ‘locally relevant’ social value outcomes

The first provides guidance on motivations, principles and definitions for community engagement and locally relevant social value.

The second provides some guidance around the practical application of how to approach the delivery of locally relevant social value throughout the planning and regeneration process, through meaningful community engagement.

Why community engagement matters

Homes England considers community engagement to be critical to maximising social outcomes on our projects. In 2023, we launched our Strategic Plan 2023 to 2028 which puts communities at the heart of our mission:

We know that engagement with communities is critical to designing places that meet peoples’ needs. We expect our partners to ensure that people can influence housing and regeneration activities in the places where they live. We will also encourage the development of effective plans for the long-term stewardship of places to ensure their continued success.

Quote from Homes England Strategic Plan 2023 to 2028

What is meant by locally relevant social value?

At Homes England we use the term ‘locally relevant social value’.

Locally relevant social value is about understanding how to deliver a lasting positive outcome that is meaningful to the specific context of a place and its community.

Planning, housing and regeneration schemes provide opportunities to create places that improve lives. The way that we design and deliver a scheme can affect the way that people interact with the space and each other.

By creating places with the needs of the local community in mind, we can design resilient communities that improve quality of life for many, while designing communities for a healthier, fairer future for generations to come.

The identification of locally relevant social value opportunities can help projects and proposals to become more outcomes-focused. Opportunities should be feasible, proportionate and aligned with your organisational strategic objectives, while also tailored to respond to local needs.

Defining locally relevant social value

Locally relevant

To ensure social value is locally relevant you can consider:

• targeted — taking tailored, place-based approaches to identifying, prioritising and delivering social value initiatives that respond to local needs and opportunities

• informed — understanding a local community, its changing demographics, vulnerable and marginalised groups, current and future needs

Social value

While there is no one single definition of social value, there are common features:

• positive — how a project or organisation can have a beneficial impact on a community

• holistic — the broad contribution that a project or an organisation makes to the wellbeing of individuals, communities, and society, across the three pillars of sustainability: economic, social and environmental

• future-focussed — using an outcomes approach to consider the long-term legacy of a project on current and future generations

Why is it important to engage local communities to generate locally relevant social value in planning, housing and regeneration?

It is the diverse communities that live, work, visit and invest in a place that makes it unique. By undertaking meaningful engagement, we can identify what matters most to local people and places.

This knowledge can be used to help shape a project and deliver lasting social value outcomes that benefit the community.

At Homes England, we consider community engagement as two-way dialogue. We define ‘community engagement’ as:

Actively listening and engaging with people living, working, visiting and investing in an area so as to inform and shape our ideas, support long term transformation and empower communities.

Whilst the Planning Act (2008) requires public consultation to be undertaken as part of the planning application process, evidenced in a local planning authority’s Statement of Community Involvement (SCI), there are many wider benefits to engaging communities throughout the planning and regeneration process.

Effective, inclusive and timely engagement processes allow for the participation of communities and collaboration with trusted local partners and stakeholders to inform decision-making from the outset. This early and informed involvement of affected communities helps build trust through transparent planning processes, while delivering better project outcomes informed by local knowledge and perspectives.

Being proactive and informed helps identify opportunities to manage impacts and maximise benefits with communities, inherently de-risking projects. Early engagement provides deeper insights into local needs, allowing us to anticipate and address challenges proactively, reducing conflicts and delays.

Early engagement has significant potential to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the planning application system for all parties. Good quality pre-application discussion enables better coordination between public and private resources and improved outcomes for the community.

Quote from National Planning Policy Framework, 2024

Effective early and ongoing engagement can help foster a sense of stewardship among local communities, enabling them to support and sustain the project’s outcomes. This leads to lasting and meaningful impacts, with the community remaining actively involved and invested in the project’s success beyond its official completion.

Guiding principles for community engagement

Establishing a set of guiding principles can help guide and maintain a consistent approach to community engagement aligned with your organisation’s strategic objectives. At Homes England, our community engagement guiding principles reflect our values, mission and objectives. These are listed here.

At Homes England, our motivations for engaging communities are:

• empowering people and local groups to participate in the planning and regeneration process
• supporting key aspects of the Homes England Strategic Plan 2023 to 2028
• achieving better quality project proposals and planning consents
• unlocking opportunities to support social and economic equity
• understanding place and community priorities to deliver locally-relevant social value and regeneration
• collaborating to attract additional investment and funding opportunities
• empowering people and local groups to participate in the planning and regeneration process
• leaving an impactful legacy — building our reputation via people and place
• helping to increase local support for proposals
• helping to generate development value

Diagram of guiding principles for community engagement

1. Inclusive, diverse, clear and transparent
2. Early collaboration and co-design — empower to inform proposals
3. Actively listening, being impactful and worthwhile
4. Set within wider placemaking context
5. Collaborative, innovative and respectful

What does great community engagement look like in the planning, housing and regeneration sector?

To effectively support the generation of locally relevant social value, community engagement needs to be well-designed and tailored to the audience. This means understanding the communities that are affected by or interested in the project and developing tailored approaches to effectively engage with them.

No 2 projects are the same, but having a set of key principles, such as the ones below, will help inform your planning for a great community engagement process.

Have a clear purpose

Clearly defining your purpose and goals for community engagement will support the design of effective methodologies and approaches. Goals might include managing social risk, building trust, understanding issues or concerns as well as needs and aspirations early in the process, to support design and decision-making to maximise locally relevant social value outcomes.

Tailored

Community engagement needs to be tailored to the project, its objectives, and the community. Consulting with community leaders and key stakeholders can help identify the best approaches for engaging in a particular community.

Informed

Communities need to have the capacity to meaningfully participate in consultation processes and provide informed feedback. This means sharing information in clear, transparent and inclusive ways. Consider the use of visuals and graphics or digital media as well as more traditional communication tools and channels, such as in-person events.

Inclusive

To leverage opportunities to support improved equity and social justice, it is critical to engage all segments of the community, including those who may be considered vulnerable or seldom heard. Different approaches will likely be required for different target audiences. Consider working with partners, such as local groups, with the connections and knowledge to effectively engage different segments of the community.

Commencing early

In general, the earlier that this engagement commences in the project lifecycle, the more effective it is at building trust and positive relationships with local communities and informing project decision-making.

Timelinesss

Consider the project timeline to ensure that community input is gathered in a timely way to inform design and optioneering processes.

Ongoing and transparent communication

Support your engagement process with ongoing mechanisms for open and inclusive communication.

About Homes England

Homes England is the government’s housing and regeneration agency. 

Homes England is committed to effective community engagement in our projects. In 2023, we launched our Strategic Plan 2023 to 2028 which puts communities at the heart of our mission:  

We drive regeneration and housing delivery to create high-quality homes and thriving places. This will support greater social justice, the levelling up of communities across England and the creation of places people are proud to call home….

You can read about our mission and our strategic objectives in the Homes England Strategic Plan 2023 to 2028.

The Homes England community engagement team

The Homes England community engagement team supports colleagues and partners to embed best practice approaches to community engagement.

From the outset, we work with partners and local communities to articulate the vision and ambition for the homes and places we enable. We complete regular project reviews and help teams to establish criteria for measuring success to demonstrate the impact of our approach.

The community engagement team has produced the Community engagement advice notes.

They can be found online at: www.gov.uk/government/collections/housing-information-hub

Get in touch to find out more about:

• the Homes England sustainability and design outcomes engagement tool
• ideas to develop Place Based Indicators that reflect local context and community
• advice for commissioning consultants to develop a community engagement strategy
• advice on how community engagement informs the Visioning process as part of developing a masterplan