Service Area: Community Planning and Community Development
Engagement Method(s): Consultation
Consultation to identify priority outcomes for a new 10 year Strategy
The chosen method was consultation as the views of local residents would influence the priorities within the plan. When the Community Planning team were required to consult on a new Outcomes Improvement Plan, they knew they had to get as much input as possible – and from the right people and with the right methods.
Firstly, reviewed the information already available – data, plans and reports. This led to a focus on 6 themes which they wanted to know more about, and a plan.
The Community Development Team and the Communications team were brought on board to roll out the consultation, which was delivered by an online survey, promoted through the Council’s social media sites, emails to key stakeholders, such as community councils as well as through posters on notice-boards.
The Community Development team were tasked with identifying and reaching out to those groups of people who traditionally are under-represented in public consultations. This team have good relationships with a wide variety of third sector groups, and were able to arrange invitations to coffee mornings, lunch clubs, community events and playgroup sessions. The team were able to liaise with those groups that knew their clientele best – whether they were likely to prefer to work with paper questionnaires, to vote with tokens in jars or to read a QR code and download the online survey on their mobiles.
About halfway through, the community planning team, who had been keeping an eye on demographic information, noticed that there was a very low response from men, so the Community Development team again sought out men’s groups to improve this ratio and ensure a representative a group as possible were involved.
All in all, nearly 2,000 people were included of whom over 25% were from people with protected characteristics.
