The Charter For Communities
We believe in community rights – and that people are the solution, not the problem.
Our Charter gives communities both protections and opportunities to drive positive change in our local areas.
Write to your MP
In July 2025, The Government introduced the England Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, with an aim being to ‘give communities stronger tools to shape their local areas’. The Community Charter gives people and places the basic rights they need to shape local decisions, protect their environment, and build healthier, fairer communities.
Write to your MP to tell them you support the inclusion of the Community Charter in the Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill.
About the Charter for Communities
Communities across England face big challenges — from the climate crisis and poor housing to disconnection and division. Too often, decisions are made far away in Whitehall, leaving local voices unheard.
Our Community Charter recognises that people are already creating solutions — from community energy to housing projects, green spaces and local initiatives that bring people together. With the right support, these efforts can strengthen our health, wellbeing and democracy.
Why It Matters
• Communities are often treated as problems to manage, rather than partners in shaping the future.
• Local voices are sidelined as decision making is centralised.
• The government’s Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill fails to give people real power over their own places.
• Our Charter shifts the balance. It gives people the rights they need to protect where they live, influence decisions, and build thriving, connected communities.
The Seven Rights
The Charter draws on international law and existing models of good practice. All are credible, achievable and already recognised elsewhere — just not yet implemented in England.
1. A clean and healthy environment (UN human right, 2022)
2. A healthy home (drafted into UK legislation but not yet passed)
3. The right to play (UN Convention on the Rights of the Child)
4. The right to grow food on public land (proposed in previous UK planning amendments)
5. The right to roam and swim (already law in Scotland)
6. A voice in local decisions (Aarhus Convention, now an EU directive)
7. The right to challenge decisions (in line with Aarhus principles and earlier UK proposals)
What’s Next
This Charter is an invitation to rethink how we work together — government and citizens, state and community. It builds on international conventions and proven ideas, but places people and places at the heart of decision-making.
By recognising these rights, we can unleash the energy of communities to create fairer, healthier and more hopeful futures.
This charter has been developed by people who care about who makes the decisions that affect the places we live. Find out more about Rights Community Action and sign up to our subscriber list here
For any queries, please email charter@rightscommunityaction.co.uk.
Signatures
Planning rules are so important to a community, to control the environment we want to live in. This should be a community decision, not developers and Whitehall.
Joanna WThirty years campaigning in King's Cross on planning issues (1983 to 2014) taught me the importance of local input. Islington Council (where I lived) was very good by and large at involving and respecting local people's input, Camden Council less so. With Islington's support we were able first to defeat the plan…
Diana SI am strongly opposed to the stripping away of what are already weak and inadequate powers for people and organisations to participate meaningfully in the planning process. These should instead be strengthened and extended to enable more democratic involvement and accountability.
Alan GMore communities need to a e more say on local development in their neighbourhoods.
Paul MThe proposed change to planning processes is another attack on our democracy
Vicky Sat the moment feeling quite impotent against masses of paperwork, a planning system that rolls on despite covid, and the inability of people to engage fully in the planning process, short time notifications for submission of objections, obvious misleading brochures and descriptions given in planning applications, the right to appeal…
Brad Shttps://www.appropedia.org/Towards_a_more_democratic_and_climate_friendly_way_of_meeting_housing_need_across_England
Phil GThe planning system ought to be based on some basic universal and long lasting democratic rights for citizens to be heard, participate in and shape the planning system and its decisions. Those rights should transcend the political priorities of government, especially now, when politicians will claim the need to act…
Stephen HIt seems to me that this is a massive power grab by central government to control us by removing local democratic processes that are now in place. What then about the Local Plans that in some cases have taken years to carefully develop? There are serious concerns here about the…
Wendy HAll the glossy brochures in the world do not compensate for proper democracy for local people. There appears to be some kind of rush to get the Planning White Paper through which is worrying in itself. The right words are often used such as sustainability and climate change, protection of…
Susan E