Neighbourhood environment improvement plans: Community empowerment, voluntary collaboration and legislative design

Abstract

This article examines a bold and imaginative experiment in facilitative regulation: the Neighbourhood Environment Improvement Plan (NEIP). It explores the NEIP's regulatory objectives and techniques, connecting them to similar approaches and trends discussed in the regulatory literature, before outlining the NEIP's achievements, limitations and challenges. It is argued that although NEIPs have the potential to provide an innovative and much needed tool to address complex second generation environmental problems, they suffer from a number of design flaws concerning how they engage stakeholders, facilitate oommunity-based decision-making and resource their operation and implementation. Recommendations are made as to how these problems might be overcome. Theoretical implications are identified in the final part of the article.