Consultation Hub | Page 6

The law surrounding statutory consultation is extensive. And yet when developers consult on planning applications, there is a stark absence of official guidance, regulation and case law. Why, in a discipline led by professionals – chartered surveyors, planning consultants and lawyers – is the approach to consultation so lacking in professional rigour?  Because in most ...

Consultation can deliver a real insight into a local area, create enduring beneficial relationships and of course provide the information necessary for a comprehensive Statement of Community Involvement (SCI) and ultimately achieve planning success. Yet frequently developers view consultation as a risk – more often than not because of concern that vocal locals may ambush ...

Read the review here.

I am delighted to have been asked to become an Associate of The Consultation Institute (tCI), joining and network of consultants who have considerable expertise in consultation and public engagement. The Consultation Institute fulfils the important role of promoting high-quality public and stakeholder consultation in the public, private and voluntary sectors. Never was there as ...

The first decade of the twenty-first century was a new era in which individuals were given the opportunity to become more active, with significantly more control whether as a purchaser, a customer or a commentator. This was largely due to increasingly interactive internet-based communications but also brought about through growing customer choice (for example in ...

The CIPR is hosting an event to mark the publication of my book Public Consultation and Community Involvement in Planning: a twenty-first century guide on Tuesday 11 July. The event will take the form of a panel discussion with myself, my co-author Martin Hughes, Kate Bailey of the Landscape Institute and Colin Haylock, Past President ...

Facebook or Twitter, or a combination of both? The various forms of social media available offer varying benefit and drawbacks. The following is a comparison of the roles and functionality of Facebook and Twitter from the point of view of public consultation – intended to help you determine the best form of social media for ...

My book, Public Consultation and Community Involvement in Planning: a twenty-first century guide will be published by Routledge in July 2017. The twenty-first century has seen significant changes in consultation and community involvement in planning. Changes to the environment in which community engagement exists include an increased legal requirement to consult; a renewed focus on ...

In some cases, the consultors’ voice is rarely heard in the discussions; in others clarifying the messages and stimulating the dialogue will be necessary to ensure an effective consultation. Determining to what extent monitoring should become involvement depends upon the following: Whether the consultation is successfully meeting the consultation objectives or whether intervention would ensure ...

It pays dividends for those running a consultation to have as clear as possible an understanding of the issues that will effect it before the consultation begins. In communications theory, an issue is usually described as, ‘an unsettled subject ready for debate or discussion’.  In a development consultation, this typically includes concerns about the site, ...

During the early stages of a consultation, when a strategy is put in place to determine the direction of the project, it will be necessary to consider whether you will allow people to respond anonymously. While anonymity has been shown to enable people to put forward their viewpoint without fear of repercussion, it could be ...

It goes without saying that local residents will be more positively engaged with a development team and less critical of it if their locality is kept clean and safe, and that they are provided with timely and adequate information should their daily lives be disrupted. The following tactics are all regarded as good practice in ...