We have ways of making you talk – communities expect no less
Community engagement is no longer an activity reserved for particularly sensitive or best-practice sites. The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 established the need for every local authority to produce a statement of community involvement. These SCIs set out how communities will be engaged in the preparation of local plans and in the process of considering planning applications. As the new SCIs are emerging, developers are having to think hard about how best to work with communities. Here’s a guide to the processes, techniques and practice of doing just that.
What is community involvement?
The government’s planning policy statement PPS1 states the need for community involvement. It also sets out the broad requirements: from participation in the development of a vision based, at least in part, on the needs of local communities to consultation as part of the process of considering planning applications.
SCIs should create the conditions for “active, meaningful, and continued involvement of local communities and stakeholders”, according to ODPM guidance. They set out how the local planning authority will consult the community and stakeholders on local development documents and major planning applications. They are required to ensure that: the level of consultation is appropriate to the size of the project, starts at the beginning of the project and continues throughout, is seen to be effective, is transparent and accountable and is joined up with other community initiatives.
Community involvement exercises are described by a plethora of different terms – public consultation, community engagement, community participation, public affairs or communications. The term used often simply reflects the primary skills of the team leading a wider raft of work, the techniques selected, or the emphasis of the activity.
Increasingly, community involvement is required to demonstrate it is an active rather than a passive pursuit. Not so long ago, a postal survey and a meeting in the village hall may have sufficed. Today, more schemes are supported by an information campaign, perhaps linked to wider activities in the local, or even regional, area.
Which technique to use and how to use it
There are many tools and techniques and, as yet, no secret formula for when it is best to use them. Each technique has its benefits and its pitfalls, but consultation and public involvement campaigns are easily tailored to each location, project, community and budget.
English Partnerships is in the early stages of producing a best practice guide for community consultation, based on the experience it has gained from schemes in different markets and locations. The research aims to delve deeper into the perceptions and practical issues surrounding community consultations and engagement on regeneration schemes. The aim is that it will help in the selection of appropriate methods for different circumstances and make the business case for listening to the views of local people.
Some techniques include:
- Branding – a distinct visual feel for all materials, complemented by succinct messages, can help a project stand out from the crowd. A good brand communicates a clear vision and encourages interest.
- Exhibitions, roadshows and drop-in centres – public exhibitions in local community locations with architects’ impressions, information to pick up, local plans on display and questionnaires. They can include “meet the architect” slots, video presentations and Q&A sessions. Informal information or visitor centres are useful because they are more relaxed than a formal public meeting.
- Websites – some projects have dedicated public websites with questionnaires, images and plans, project schedules, background information, consultation information and contacts. The website address should be a key part of a publicity campaign for this technique to be effective.
- Open/public meetings – often with project partners presenting and local authority representatives in attendance to outline plans, set the context and be open to questions from the floor. Be warned, these can be hijacked by a vocal minority.
- Enquiry by design – a process pioneered by EP with the Prince’s Foundation. This effectively invites stakeholders, planners, professionals and community representatives to take part in a week of intense discussion to find common ground and put down on paper some form of consensus for the vision. Although an additional expense, it speeds up discussion and pins down areas of future contention.
- Planning for real – another process to engage the community, initiated and trademarked by the Neighbourhood Initiatives Foundation. This differs from enquiry by design in that it takes a holistic approach and focuses on all a community’s needs, from a development proposal to local youth needs.
- Techniques designed to engage hard-to-reach groups – teenagers, the elderly and infirm, and people who have English as a second language are less likely to take part in a consultation exercise. So, in order to be more representative, some projects are employing tactics such as taking consultation exercises out to shopping centres, train stations and bowling alleys (to reach teenagers), translating materials into key community languages as standard, or employing third-party brokers to reach disillusioned or uninterested sections of the community.
The fundamentals of SCIs
What is an SCI?
A Statement of Community Involvement is a document that a local authority must put together to set out its policy for involving the community in the preparation and revision of local development documents and for consulting on planning applications
What level of community involvement do developers have to engage in with their planning applications?
The ODPM’s guidance for local authorities, Statements of Community Involvement and Planning Applications, sets out a three-tier approach, depending on whether applications:
The guidance identifies what types of consultation are expected for each tier. For example, a third tier application would be expected to consult with: a citizens’ panel, parish councils and a local architectural or design panel using the media and a website.
However, local authorities have not adopted this guidance universally in their SCIs. Some SCIs simply encourage pre-application consultation while others specifiy exactly what type of activities developers should engage in.
Have local authorities already prepared their SCIs?
Most are in draft form. They are subject to an eight-week consultation period and will go through a basic inquiry process.
What’s the practitioners’ advice for developers?
Seven ways to get the process right
1 Agree and communicate your objectives at the outset
What is the public involvement activity and why is it happening? Will it be a straightforward piece of market research, or is it setting out to be a major consultation exercise that will influence the shape and nature of the project, and perhaps influence local policy direction over time? The language you use will be critical. It is useful to map out the project lifecycle, adding in when you intend to inform, consult and feed back any results or important information.
2 Clarify your messages
Don’t speak in planning or policy jargon. Use simple, accessible English. Tailor your language and your message for each audience and keep it brief. And remember that a picture speaks a thousand words. Create a stock of strong images for use in materials. Ideally, get in a qualified professional to run the communications. Decide if you will be publishing the results of your surveys. What will you do if they criticise the project?
3 Research and agree a budget
Who pays? Who owns the project? Who owns the process? Don’t start a consultation process you won’t have the money to finish. And don’t harbour ambitions of massive consumer advertising campaigns and public roadshows without researching the cost implications. Someone has to pick up the tab.
4 Manage expectations
Be clear who is ultimately accountable for the success of the regeneration scheme. Activity needs to be as transparent as possible. Managing expectations of all partners and putting out consistent public messages is vital. Remember, if the project schedule slips considerably, your consultation programme could slip with it. A community group you initially established to consult around key milestones in project delivery could exist for years, not months.
5 Remember the silent majority
The usual suspects, including local dignitaries, influential businesses, local newspaper editors, church leaders, habitual complainers and the politically minded will expect their views to count – and perhaps even to receive a little ego massaging. But it is important to retain a sense of perspective. Most people will not volunteer their views on regeneration schemes. They may have no spare time in their busy lives, little faith in the process, or simply be uninterested. Given this, it is important to employ creative strategies that reach the average man or woman. Getting sample sizes that are large enough and really represent the make-up of the local population is important.
6 Keep talking
After a burst of enthusiasm for your scheme, will it all go quiet when you move on to another new project? If you set out ambitious and very public claims at the outset – better quality buildings, cutting-edge design, more jobs, greener lifestyles – have you delivered? If you told people their opinions would be valued and make a difference, why have you stopped keeping them informed about progress? Remember that a journalist could follow, or revisit, the project and ask you what you’ve achieved against your initial promises.
7 Get in the professionals
If you have no expertise in-house, there are agencies and professional consultants who organise community engagement campaigns and public consultation. Getting in qualified professionals should save you time and money, and provide effective damage limitation, if it’s needed.
Milton Keynes’ expansion
Milton Keynes Partnership is the authority for a 30-year expansion plan for the Buckinghamshire town. A range of programmes are already in the pipeline, from developing central Milton Keynes to promoting the development of more than 15,000 new homes and aiding job creation in what is England’s fastest growing area.
Jane Hamilton, MKP’s chief operating officer, says: “In every case, key stakeholders, such as local community representatives and businesses, are on the project’s management group.” MKP aims to integrate the local community into the decision-making process at the higher strategic level, as well as at the lower, more detailed level, where it has run a range of initiatives from collaborative design workshops to schools programmes.
Hamilton dismisses the notion that the requirement for consultation slows the development process. She says it enables issues to be dealt with up front, meaning fewer problems at the later stages. To prove a point she states that recently there were only five objections received to major planning applications for up to 3000 dwellings in CMK.
Managing all the stakeholders
Stakeholder management goes beyond community consultation. A stakeholder is someone with a stake in the project who can be affected positively or negatively by it. It can also incorporate those who can affect the project positively or negatively. Examples include the client, end users, project team – including consultants and contractors – neighbours and interest groups.
Stakeholders can be inherently resistant to the changes projects deliver. Such resistance is a natural reaction and those responsible for delivering a project must seek to communicate the objectives of the change and provide stakeholders with a better understanding of why change is necessary.
Honest, ethical and socially responsible behaviour is a distinct benefit in managing stakeholders. Good practice can be summarised in three stages:
It is not always practical to develop a strategy for each individual stakeholder. You should therefore seek to classify stakeholders in terms of: their importance to the project, their relationship to it, their attitude to it and their potential impact on it. Classifying key stakeholders into groups is a useful tool and allows management strategies for like groups to be developed.
For each stakeholder identify what determines their attitude to the project.
For each stakeholder or group the management strategy needs to be tailored to promote greater understanding, trust and commitment to the central aims of the project. You need to provide a clear strategy that incorporates
Turner & Townsend has developed a number of stakeholder management strategies, but all follow the same basic principles. Project managers should:
Implementing the stakeholder management strategy Leading causes of project failure are insufficient involvement of stakeholders and infrequent communication with sponsors. The best way to approach communication is to develop a clearly planned approach. To provide an effective communications platform:
New Islington Millennium Community, Manchester
In Manchester, the New East Manchester urban regeneration company, developer Urban Splash and Manchester council are redeveloping a once notorious housing estate in the east of the city as the New Islington Millennium Community.
The vision for the redevelopment is bold and creative and draws on the imagination of architects such as Alsop and FAT. Public consultation was a little unorthodox. Residents of the first phase of affordable homes at Woodward Place were invited to take a role in the design of their homes – rejecting the initial proposal for apartments and opting instead for a modern interpretation of a terraced home, which includes options for balconies and different coloured facades.
Urban Splash produced a 3D headpiece offering a “virtual fly-through” of the project. The fly-through also formed the centrepiece for a visitor centre on site. A photographic book of local people’s memories of the former estate was also produced, outlining their experiences, as well as their hopes and fears for the future.
Funding community consultation
Active community involvement is high on the agenda in both the Sustainable Communities Plan and the Safer and Stronger Communities Fund. Both of these pay significant attention to the aim of not only giving communities more say in local decision making, but making sure that everyone has the skills and knowledge to be able to participate. Supporting these aspirations is a growing number of funding opportunities, available to ensure that there is not only wide community engagement, but effective consultation too. But how do you make sure you are taking advantage of funding opportunities that will help you engage with grass roots stakeholders? The key is that you can often incorporate such financial support into your wider funding strategies or take advantage of partnership working with those whose remit is to make sure their members and beneficiaries are fully participating in local decision making.
If your overall scheme is applying for or receiving external funding for a major capital project, it is usually one of the stated funding priorities that there is demonstrable need and demand for the project. Evidence towards this will be the findings from the community stakeholder consultation and it is often the case that the funder wants to see this input continue through the project, influencing final designs and schemes. They will therefore pay for the associated costs, such as hiring space, literature, short-term staff costs or consultants. Consultation is a core cost While all project costs are scrutinised for value for money, it is hardly ever the case that the cost of community consultation will be reduced or removed. It is more likely that a funder will ask if you would like to extend consultation through the project timetable to the monitoring and evaluation stage, an element of community consultation that is often missed. So consider these costs as central as, say, non-recoverable VAT or inflation.
With larger funding pots now targeted at the UK’s disadvantaged areas, engaging these communities from the beginning has become paramount. This is reflected in more public sector funding being focused at early planning stages of scheme development. For example, local authorities in the 88 most deprived areas are currently considering their strategies for the £10m pump priming being made available in advance of the £300m local enterprise growth initiative. Engaging communities will be an integral part of these plans and therefore a perfectly valid cost for the funding to cover.
Not only are there more community funding opportunities in areas of deprivation, funding is also targeted at those whose voices are not so easily heard or at communities that are harder to engage, such as children and young adults, or ethnic minorities.
However, unless you are able to embed community consultation as part of the wider funding package as above, you will find that it is easier to access community consultation funding through a partnership approach. You are more likely to be eligible to receive grant aid if you are a community or voluntary group. When adopting a partnership approach a host of funding streams are available.
Some are aimed at specific target audiences, such as the tenant empowerment grant, which aims to improve tenant participation in local authority housing, and the Y speak consultation fund, which gives children and young people the chance to have their say about services that affect them. Others, such as the community champions fund, offer the opportunity to support and encourage local people to get involved in renewing their neighbourhoods.
Source
RegenerateLive
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