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In this article, we explore how the people in the north west of England are shaping their local areas and how councils and developers are actively listening and creating plans from these desires. Private Developers and local councils often find themselves working towards a common goal: bringing the community on board with their plans for places and creating elements they can celebrate together. 

The citizens of the north west, as with anywhere in Great Britain, are people who care deeply about their immediate surroundings. From homes to schools, to amenities and green spaces, local people are desperate to have a say and improve the places where they live work and play- and we've had the pleasure of experiencing this over the years. 6.5% of the north west have already visited a Commonplace site to make their voice heard with over 244,000 contributions across the region. From the naming of a new train station in Merseyside to the local climate action happening in Manchester, people are keen to get involved, showing how crucial engagement is to shaping successful developments.

People make places and taking the time to invest and talk to them is the best way to make an effective change anywhere.

Whatever might happen with the government’s ‘Levelling Up’ plans, Commonplace has certainly seen what levelling up means to local communities in recent years. There have been useful investments and above all, “levelling up” has given expression to higher expectations of what new and improved developments should deliver.

With this in mind, let’s take a look at how community engagement has been used to shape the northwest and the best tools for both local councils and private developers to communicate with people and deliver their requirements. 

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Building with the community in mind

Building with the community in mind

When it comes to development,  especially housing development, the main goal should be to engage an audience that’s a good representation of the surrounding community. With many projects happening in built-up areas, getting the community onboard is not only a legal necessity but crucial to avoid it being slowed down or even face a level of austerity that will make the project unviable. 

There are over 66,000 hectares of brownfield sites in the UK* with the government having pledged in 2021 to build 160,000 new homes on some of this space. Brownfield sites have been identified for nearly 3,000 new homes in the Liverpool City Region alone** and are ripe to be used in the coming years as part of the country’s Net Zero strategy. 

These projects will come with neighbour considerations: be they the shape of the building, the pressure on local infrastructure, access roads or to amenities- and this just highlights how important it is to properly manage public engagement early, inclusively and well. 

What do we mean by this? Let’s break it down.

Early: Create public awareness of projects from the start: the pre-planning phase. It’s the best time for objections to be aired, issues addressed and the project's outcome to be clearly explained to avoid as many (potentially expensive) hiccups down the line as possible. Typically there will be months of behind-the-scenes planning activity and it’s during this time that continuous engagement is vital.  This can be achieved using:

  • Clear project website: With a well-crafted site, all the information about an upcoming project can be hosted in one easy-to-access location. Important links and documents can be showcased and explained as well as the main goal of the development posted in black and white for all website visitors to understand.

  • Social media and email promotion: The community needs to be reached in order for them to leave their comments early on. Ways of doing this include using social media channels and existing subscriber lists you may have (or wish to build). Our engagement experts can help you craft a free (or paid) social media campaign that brings in new visitors to your project. Our email management tool helps you create segmented email campaigns to deliver the right messages to the right audiences. 

Inclusively: This covers everything from making sure engagements are accessible to showing that the spread of data collected is an accurate representation of the demographics in the local community. this can be achieved with tools such as:

  • Participation dashboard: Use our participation dashboard to understand who you are reaching so you can drive an inclusive approach to your community engagement. You can even benchmark against ONS data in the area you are consulting so you can ensure proportional representation.

  • Spatial and Theme analysis: You can easily explore sentiment and theme at a neighbourhood, city or county level by viewing your data on a map. Choose an area and see the sentiment and themes for that population and see how people are reacting to your plans in real time.

  • Online and Offline engagement methods: We’ve always advocated for a blended approach for consultations in order to capture the interest of as many people as possible. One thing the pandemic highlighted was the digital divide in certain areas of the community and the tools needed to actively seek out and engage with those who do not normally share their voice in typical community engagements (sometimes referred to as the silent majority). Find out more about these methods here.

Well: Engagement needs to be continuous and well-rounded. This means keeping the public involved at every stage of development, from when spades hit the ground to completion. Besides updates on the scope of the project, this also includes showing the local community how their input has shaped this project or closing the loop as it’s called. This can be done by using:

  • News Feed: Keep the community up to date with regular news updates. No matter how small the change, letting local people see that their ideas have made actual change will, not only bring a more positive reputation to your project but encourage more engagement in the long run.

  • Community Heatmap: Transparency is key to trust and a Heatmap allows people to see what other members of the community are thinking. Your community members can choose the exact location they want to comment on by dropping a pin. They can then answer a series of customisable questions as well as make suggestions, share ideas, or agree with other comments.

A shared goal

When developing brownfield sites for new users, the work of both the public sector and private developers can become indistinguishable from each other. On developed or derelict land, private developments are being erected in spaces that already reflect the expectations and behaviours of the existing community. With this in mind, the distinction between private and public is almost counterproductive in this regard as bringing the community on board with development is a shared goal. As is making sure that the development and placemaking contribute to the long-term well-being of the community. 

Together, it’s about building and enhancing these spaces as best as we can and getting as much local input as possible to drive these results. So how can this be done?

 

Proven results

Let’s get down to the numbers of it all and show how a strong community engagement strategy can create such positive outcomes.

  • Blackpool
    Blackpool Heatmap

Commonplace worked with Blackpool Council on its bid to the Towns Fund in 2020. Public engagement in shaping the bid was a key part of the process and, by using Commonplace, the Council was able to clearly demonstrate how residents’ priorities were expressed. During a time of partial lockdown with no opportunity for face-to-face events, Commonplace's Community Heatmap and Design Feedback tools were vital in increasing the accessibility of the community engagement project.

Commonplace’s tools have ensured that local people, community groups, local businesses and other organisations were able to share their insights and recommendations and contribute towards the growth of the area from the safety of their homes. Sections of the bid such as “Economy and Enterprise” encapsulate the link between public and private investment and the way that national policies for supporting economic growth - such as the Enterprise Zone in Blackpool Airport - should be linked with local priorities. 

Thanks to over 2100 contributions throughout the course of the engagement, they secured £39.5m of funding which, thanks to the input of the community, is now being used on 7 different projects highlighted during the engagement. These include the relocation of Blackpool courts, regeneration of the Revoe area into sports facilities as well as upgrading the much beloved Blackpool illuminations. ***

 

  • Liverpool

Liverpool Local Strategy

On a metropolitan scale, the Liverpool Local Strategy website is a great example of collecting and presenting community priorities on a city-wide scale and how this data can then be used to create projects people can get behind. The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (LCR) launched LCR Listens in 2020 to prepare its first Spatial Development Strategy. The driving factor of this was gathering community views on the challenges faced by the City Region and how they should be tackled.

One engagement and over 1000 responses later and the City-region now has a view of, not only the biggest concerns of the local citizens but ways in which these concerns can be addressed. No more flying blind.

When asked about planning for the future, the local citizens felt most passionately about the following topics:

  • Environment and Climate Change (the biggest challenge being a loss of green space, loss of habitats and too much dependence on cars)
  • Healthier, Safer and more resilient communities (the biggest challenges in meeting the needs of an ageing population)
  • The infrastructure we need (Public transport infrastructure is needed the most)
  • A connected city region (The biggest challenges being car-dominated streets, road congestion and poor rail connections).

Thanks to projects like this all across the northwest, we now have access to an enormous bank of data that shows the wants of local citizens. This can be deployed when planning for future projects. Knowing what people already may want to talk about is great for crafting survey questions and creating engagements that will net the best data possible for positive change.

Liverpool train station name engagement

This can also be seen in another LCR project from earlier this year:  a public consultation for naming a new Liverpool City train station. Over 11,000 project views and 3200 responses (1000 in the first 24 hours alone) later, the mayor announced the new name to be ‘Liverpool Baltic’ after receiving 77% of the votes. A topic with such a wide interest has helped them build a large audience base, showing not only that their suggestions have shaped the place they live, but encouraging engagement in future projects too. It shows what the community cares about in their own words as well as the demographics of those answering.

One aspect of digital engagement compared to engagement in a more ‘traditional’ sense is the younger people it can reach. In the train station vote, 25-34 was the largest age group to respond closely followed by 35-44, very different to more traditional town-hall style engagements where it’s usually the older generations who have the time to attend. This did not, however, mean that older generations did not participate with those aged 55 and above still making up almost 13% of the votes in a spread of people aged 15 and upwards. 

The Liverpool Local Strategy website showed similar results. While the largest groups to respond were those aged 45-64,  it was closely followed by those aged 34-44 and 25-34. 

Attracting younger people to civic engagements is crucial in building a round picture of local wants and online-led engagement is one of the best ways to do this. Traditionally, the younger demographics are more time-poor in general and those looking to find somewhere to live and care about aspects like air quality and public amenities- they need the tools to be heard. These engagements have shown that they have. Project sites like this allow citizens to be heard in a structured positive way rather than finding themselves at the end of a petition months after a project is already in motion. 

And this is crucial to consider when it comes to the wider picture of ‘levelling up’ local areas.

Levelling Up local areas

Communities will expect developments close to them to help ‘level up’ the area. To local people this may mean more GPs, more classrooms, better lighting conditions, an improved library space etc- it’s the very local levelling up that comes with new development that helps people understand the benefits of the project and conversely, Commonplace helps you understand what people are interpreting ‘Levelling Up’ to be for them. Whatever happens with Levelling Up within government, northern communities are now beginning to make clearer what it means to them. As pointed commented by columnist Ed Dorrel, it certainly does not mean transforming northern cities into London- it means more civic pride, cleaner facilities, more opportunities that plug into local interest and heritage, and young people gaining employment locally.****

These aspirations aren’t going to go away any time soon and this is where new developments come in. People are going to expect an elevation of these things with new developments, no matter how these are funded.


We’ve seen how the people of the northwest are hungry to share their views and improve the places they love so much. If you’d like to understand how to effectively gather community views and prevent as much friction as possible during your next project, our expert team will be more than happy to show you how. Just click the link below or contact one of them directly.

 

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Links and Resources

*https://sustainablebuild.co.uk/brownfieldsites/ 

**https://www.liverpoolcityregion-ca.gov.uk/nearly-3000-new-homes-to-be-built-on-14-brownfield-sites-in-liverpool-city-region-as-part-of-36m-plan-to-tackle-housing-crisis 

***https://www.liveblackpool.info/about/town-centre/proposal-for-a-blackpool-town-deal/ 

https://capx.co/will-the-red-wall-have-to-make-do-with-singapore-on-tees/ 

**** https://capx.co/will-the-red-wall-have-to-make-do-with-singapore-on-tees/