Property PR Hub

Community relations during construction

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 ...
Consultation Hub

Asking the right questions

What are the ‘right’ questions to ask in a consultation on a development proposal? Unsurprisingly, there is no ‘right’ answer!  Consultation can range from an issues-based exercise which encourages a wide range of ideas from its audience, to a referendum which invites residents to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a single idea.  Ideally a consultation ...
Consultation Hub

Selecting tactics

There are literally 100s of consultation tactics and with the advent of online consultation that list is growing by the day. So here are some ideas to help you select the most appropriate tactics for your consultation. Accessibility – do the tactics selected give all sections of the community an opportunity to comment? Analysis – ...
Property PR Hub

Media relations in consultation

There is an assumption that the media, specifically local newspapers, are naturally anti-development, that a newspaper will always champion the voice of the local resident over that of a corporate entity, and that bad news is more likely to make the headlines than good news. There is some truth in this, but this does not ...
Property PR Hub

Ethics in consultation

All too often, consultation is mentioned in relation to a ‘sham’ or a ‘tick box’ exercise and references made to ‘spin’ and ‘persuasion’. I have spent some time thinking about standards of excellence in consultation and have come to the conclusion that best practice consultation is all of the following:  Symmetrical A good consultation aims ...
Consultation Hub

Principles in consultation

All too often, consultation is mentioned in relation to a ‘sham’ or a ‘tick box’ exercise and references made to ‘spin’ and ‘persuasion’. I have spent some time thinking about standards of excellence in consultation and have come to the conclusion that best practice consultation is all of the following: Symmetrical A good consultation aims ...
Consultation Hub

Consultation and changing roles

Having recently completed the first draft of a book on innovation in public consultation, I have interviewed many people in the profession. It was interesting to find that in most cases, public consultations are run by planning consultants, in many cases by PR / consultation specialists but sometimes delegated to junior administrative staff with the ...
Consultation Hub

The future of online consultation

The communications theorist Grunig defined excellence in communication as that which promotes the use of research, dialogue and consultation to manage conflict, improve understanding and build constructive relationships with a wide range of publics.  This seemed a good basis on which to consider the merits of online consultation in theoretical terms.  And my analysis (see ...