Consultation Hub | Page 7

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 ...

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 ...

Penny Norton’s book Public Consultation and Community Involvement in Planning: a twenty-first century guide is complete and due for publication by Routledge in June 2017.

To receive our white paper, Tackling Apathy in Consultation please email ConsultOnline

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 – ...

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 ...

Following the success of the online consultation service ConsultOnline, CommunitiesOnline is launched, providing and efficient and effective community relations service during 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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...