Abstract/Summary

This paper argues that the political policy construction and modification of neighbourhood planning in England is a quintessentially neoliberal project. It discusses the moral economy of the localism agenda where it is argued that the criticisms levelled at neighbourhood planning during its first few years have proven to be accurate and, over a decade since the policy was introduced in 2010, evidence of its failings have mounted. Yet despite this, the UK government continue to not only pursue the policy and extol its virtues to local communities, they actively require its success as an ‘apprentice piece’ of neoliberal policy making.