CONSULTING ONLINE "COULD GIVE PROJECT BACKERS A VOICE" April 2009

Chelgate Limited has launched a new internet-based service, called PlanningConsultation.com, to significantly help improve community and stakeholder engagement surrounding major development projects.

It offers developers – traditionally fearful of encouraging feedback – a low risk prospect of attracting a project’s supporters to express their opinions.

The new service is a cost-effective way to conduct a meaningful consultation exercise, with deeper penetration into the local community, reaching more of the silent majority of people who would otherwise not participate in the process. Data collected can be ‘mapped’ and then effectively used with the media, at planning committee and public enquiry stages of a project.

Mapping involves all the responses being plotted on local Google maps enabling the issues raised to be expressed in terms of their frequency and location, and how they have changed over time.

Chelgate is one of the country’s leading public relations consultancies long experienced in planning support and community engagement. Over the last two decades, the firm has built a reputation handling communications surrounding difficult or contentious development projects. Its track record is impeccable – Chelgate has not been involved with a project that has failed for over a decade. Projects have ranged from a major leisure village in Wiltshire to a national memorial in London, and from a historic dockyard in Kent to a major mixed use regeneration project in London’s Victoria.

Michael Hardware, executive vice-president and former property developer himself, explained: “With any challenging project, there are always the same problems: only those vehemently opposed to a project are motivated enough to express their opinions; the loudest voices tend to inhibit the more moderate and open-minded; rumour and hearsay are rife and largely unchecked; and it is difficult for the community to find reliable sources of information about what is proposed.

“Our new internet tool addresses those problems directly: it is the communications hub of the project, providing a reliable and comprehensive source of information on what is proposed; the easy availability of this accurate information counters any rumour or hearsay; and by allowing people to express their views from the comfort and privacy of their homes, it encourages a bigger and better-balanced response.”Located at www.planningconsultation.com, the website also has features to ‘interact’ with the local community and stakeholders, and to make effective use of their comments and suggestions. The website allows people to ask questions, to lodge comments and to register for updates. It holds all comments in a database allowing full evaluation including mapping, with many of the results able to be made public, if helpful to the project aims.

PlanningConsultation.com is used as the focus of community and stakeholder engagement programmes, supplementing the other elements such as meetings, exhibitions and media relations. Michael Hardware added: “Its use so far has demonstrated that it assists in making the engagement more meaningful, having greater penetration into the community, thus ensuring the entire community engagement exercise is effective. Above all, it gives a voice to the silent majority of local opinion otherwise rarely expressed – those neutral, those willing to wait-and-see, and those in favour of change.”

Ends

Further information: