IT was a simple idea - so simple that no one had ever thought of it before. It was conceived by some very bright people with the backing of none other than the Prince of Wales.

It could be about to cause a revolution for the future in Skipton, Settle and Craven as a whole. To use the official word, we could be on the verge of a renaissance.

And the idea that sparked it all off was this: when you are dealing with long term development issues in a given community, you don't ask the planners and the housing managers what they want. You ask the people who live there!

This breath-takingly simple concept is being rolled out in Skipton and Settle this month by a group of community planning experts under a scheme launched by Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency, somewhat grandly named Renaissance Market Towns (RMT).

The idea is to breath new life into small country towns by drawing up long-term master plans for their future development taking into account a wide range of criteria.

This means not just architecture but employment, business, sports amenities, social life, further education, transport and support facilities for the hinterland. In fact, virtually everything that makes a town tick.

Now I have to admit that I have seen many ambitious plans launched in my time. I have also seen a few spectacularly collapse and many others quietly wither on the vine,

In Skipton, as far as I can recall, there have been at least two - or was it three? - traffic surveys in the past decade. So far, nothing has happened on any of them so I approached the people running the RMT programme with not a little scepticism.

For a start, the John Thompson Partnership, community planners, is based in smart offices in London so what could they understand of rural problems in post-foot and mouth Craven?

The director who will be handling the two local schemes, Marcus Adams, deflected that one with remarkable ease: "We don't know. Yet. That's why we will be sending our team up to see you this month. We want you to tell us.

"This stems from the time when our founder, John Thompson, was doing quite a lot of work with Prince Charles in the 1980s when he was very concerned about inner city developments.

"Before then, we had asked the planners and the council housing officials what they wanted. Then we discovered that, to get things right, we should ask the people who live there what they wanted.

"You see, the fact of the matter is that town planners don't actually plan towns. They plan bits of them piecemeal - some housing here, an industrial estate there. Our concept is to look as a town as a whole, to see how it fits together in a way that the community wants."

Now I found this quite impressive: here's a company that works with officialdom but was prepared to admit that officialdom does not always get it right. But I wanted some concrete examples.

"Well," said Marcus, "we already know that many small towns have problems with young people moving away to the big cities.

"Most people put this down to the fact that there are no jobs for the youngsters. Certainly, creating employment is one of our major objectives but this is not always the cause for young people leaving.

"That is often down to the fact that there are no amenities for them to enjoy their leisure, or that the town centres are not welcoming places. That's the sort of thing we hope to put right - but it will be a long term project."

Now there's a nail hit pretty squarely on the head, for Craven has some of the best schools in the country but, sadly, a very large proportion of their students go elsewhere to make their careers.

Long-term seems to be the key phrase here. Over the years, there have been either Government or EU funds for all sorts of regeneration programmes - and many of those millions have been squandered on quick-fix solutions popular for a couple of years and then forgotten.

This time, Yorkshire Forward and the John Thompson team are promising to be on the case for as long as it takes to draw up the master-plans for both towns and see those plans put into action.

"This project will be strategy led, not fund fed," says Marcus. That's quite a catchy slogan. If it can be converted into reality, we have a lot to gain.

However, there is one ingredient that is absolutely essential: the co-operation of all the people of Craven. Unless they tell the team what they really want for their future communities, they cannot do the job properly.

Their teams have a long weekend planned in Skipton in July.

They will be making attempts to contact anyone who has any views or ideas to discuss - "the most important part of beginning this process is to talk to as many people as possible," says Marcus Adams.

So now is your chance. You are invited to telephone Nichola Ford at the John Thompson Partnership, 020 7251 5135, or email her on nf@jtp.co.uk