COMMUNITY CONSULTATION


who care about the place they live in, where they shop, where they want their children to live, gain employment and buy affordable homes. With this thought in mind consulting with them on the future of their settlement should be seen more as an excuse to gain quality market research. No doubt if you’re planning residential or leisure developments you will be looking to the local community to buy your new homes, and use the new shopping or entertainment facilities? Just think, marketing professionals have been undertaking this approach for many years, so let’s grasp the opportunity to create environments that are better suited to a community’s needs. Before you start a community


consultation you’ll also need to ask yourself – “Do I have the skill-set to manage consultations effectively?” In the past you may have relied on your planning agent to smooth the way and spoken to your public relations department to drum up local support and weaken negative comment. Now you’re really going to have to embrace liaising with a very diverse range of people and communicate with them effectively – that will also mean getting over complex messages in a way they will understand but not feel ‘belittled’. You’ll need to consider


So how do we achieve effective community consultation? Think of a community and


you may be imagining a group of NIMBY’S ‘Not In My Back Yarders’, or the parish council from the Vicar of Dibley or a place where rumours are as wild as the whispers that started them. Horrifying to visualise that these groups could have any say, let alone influence on any proposal in their neighbourhood. Now, also consider that a


community is a group of people


managing effective communication techniques - from running a social media campaign, to direct mail, and media relations, to event management. And of course no two campaigns will ever be the same, all plans need to be bespoke to fit the community and to suit your development plans. There are, of course, a range of agencies specialising in community consultation who can manage a campaign on your behalf, but make sure they thoroughly understand the planning process – consulting the community about changes in NHS care is very different to getting a planning application approved. If you get community


consultation right it can be a very effective tool in smoothing the way to gain planning permission, if you get it wrong you can hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons, and waste enormous amounts of time and money.


ArchitectNews.co.uk | Architects Choice | 17


Who makes up the community and how do you engage them? The key to this is research, research, research! Whilst the local planning department should always be the first port of call for pre-application discussion, there are other players out there too. Parish/Town Councils, M.P.s and Ward Members, amenity groups, residents and those who live close to the proposed site. Once you know who makes up


the community, the next stage is to understand the people and groups in the community. Find out what their aspirations are? What do they want for their community’s future? Whilst there will always be NIMBYs who are against any change in their area - and will not be shy about venting their anger - the usually silent majority will be accepting of development as long as they see it as fulfilling a community need and the benefits outweighing the negatives. As ever timing is everything,


so how soon should you engage with a community? It’s easy to understand developers being cautious about announcing plans to a community too early as they’re concerned about the rumour mill and giving the


community time to create a big ‘NO’ campaign to scare everyone into signing petitions and running social media campaigns against your proposals. However, if the consultation is left too late, the community, planning officers and planning committees will take the view that there has been no opportunity for any meaningful community involvement and this could easily result in the Local Planning Authority refusing the application. This will create knock-on costs for you to undertake appeals or re- submissions of planning applications, which all add significant time delays to the project. There is no definite right


answer and timing will always be down to the ‘gut-feel’ of the client and their community consultation team. However, if there is a broad consensus in the community to the principle of development then there is nothing to be lost in engaging the community from the very beginning when the canvas is still relatively blank? If the developer and architect have some broad concepts in mind then it is ideal to engage with the local community as soon as


All images: Big Wave PR.


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