Engaging the public on the complex topic of local planning poses significant challenges. To explore how a well-crafted communications strategy can help overcome these hurdles, we sat down with Mark Prichard, the Head of Communications for West Oxfordshire, Cotswold, and Forest of Dean Councils to talk about their recent success. This interview equips local council communications officers and planners with the tools to navigate these challenges and foster productive community engagement.
Havant Borough, like many local authorities across the UK, prioritises fostering inclusive and equitable engagement with its residents. However, data dispersion across systems hindered comprehensive analysis, making it difficult to assess the true representativeness of participating residents. By co-developing a Power BI integration with CitizenLab, Havant Borough can now capitalise on the full potential of its data, paving the way for more inclusive and well-informed decision-making processes.
The New Year is a time for reflection and celebration. As local governments gear up for a whole new year of community engagement, you want to take a step back and look at how you might reach new people or reactivate community members who haven’t engaged with you in some time. While setting goals for 2024, it’s also an ideal time to explore new strategies and tools.
How Copenhagen got 12,000 residents to participate in large-scale Proposals project in just 4 months
In August 2023, the City of Copenhagen took a bold step forward on their participatory democracy journey with a new community engagement initiative: encouraging residents to submit proposals for city improvement projects. In just four months since their launch, they have gained 12,000 platform registrants.
Cambridge experienced first-hand the power of CitizenLab’s AI assistant in the analysis of open-ended text responses during their Design Code consultation for northern Cambridge neighbourhoods. Discover how it helped the team save 10 precious hours and opened the door for including more free-text questions in future consultations, enriching the depth and quality of community engagement.
As we wrap up the year, our experts compiled a diverse collection for our final showcase of 2023. This selection introduces fresh, inspiring projects but also revisits some of the most noteworthy ones our community of 500+ local governments and organizations launched in the past year. Enjoy the read!
Traditionally, community engagement has been compartmentalised into offline and online methods, often treated as distinct and separate elements. However, the evolving needs and preferences of the public call for a paradigm shift. It’s time to blend these worlds, for instance by using digital engagement platforms as enhancers of offline community engagement. This integration promises to streamline processes and enrich the quality of participation.
