Sectors

Planning application support, and community and stakeholder engagement

Over the last two decades, Chelgate has built a reputation as one of the country’s leading practices handling communications surrounding difficult or contentious development projects. Our track record is impeccable – we have not been involved with a project that has failed for over a decade. They 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. Further examples of projects we have been involved in can be viewed here.

As well as the most challenging projects, we have also handled numerous commercial and residential developments for various major house builders, developers, clients and funders. The obstacles and opposition at each have meant evolving individual strategies to sustain productive relationships and achieve intended outcomes.

Two of the projects we have been involved in have received awards for community engagement: work on St Crispin’s in Northamptonshire was commended by the Prince’s Trust as a demonstration of best practice in community engagement, and our coordination of communications for the team remodelling Trafalgar Square in London received a commendation in the Construction Marketing Awards.

Chelgate team

The Chelgate resource is probably unique, consisting of former councillors, including planning committee members, a former property developer, former and current journalists, and environmental campaigners.

Our services

Our service is tailored to the client, and the particular project requirements, but could include strategy development (positioning and messaging), engagement with local councillors and other stakeholders (national and local), community engagement (through various channels), media relations (local and national), issues and crisis management, collateral development, advertising, exhibitions and other events, and online and internet support.

Community engagement

Chelgate has developed a new internet tool to facilitate more effective community and stakeholder engagement. With any challenging project, there are always the same problems: only those vehemently opposed to a project are motivated enough to express their opinions; 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.

Chelgate’s 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 it allows people to express their views from the comfort and privacy of their homes.

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. It enables the project prinicpals to see the issues that have been raised expressed in terms of their frequency and location, and how they have changed over time or in response to interventions.

We have used PlanningConsultation as the focus of community and stakeholder engagement programmes, supplementing the other elements such as meetings, exhibitions and media relations. 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.

To view a current project using the Chelgate tool, please click here.

For further information about Chelgate’s development planning and community relations services, please contact:

Michael Hardware
t: 020 7939 7939
e: planning@chelgate.com