Provides a descriptive analysis of the Integrated Action Planning (IAP) approach. IAP incorporates community participation in planning and development and assists small municipalities in preparing four year investment plans based on their own resources, that of the communities and the expected resources which national government departments and agencies have marked for their towns. Areas of concern include applications and characteristics of IAP, different steps and major outputs of IAP, physical and environmental development plan (scope, content, preparation and implementation), multi sector investment programme (objectives, financial resource analysis, project formulation and programming) and institutionalization of IAP.