UK Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) 
Back to Digital Planning Programme Case Studies
Challenge
Digital engagement with communities is a growing priority for councils, especially when it comes to developing local plans. Havant Borough Council did not have a digital engagement platform that their community could easily access, as explained in the PropTech Innovation Fund Round 2 report. Processing feedback was an intensive, manual, administrative task for the council that they needed to address in order to be able to handle increases in responses. Establishing a digital platform for engagement was recognised as an important opportunity to improve and broaden interactions with residents and take into account their views on local play park planning.
Approach
PropTech Innovation funding was made available for the council to pilot a new tool from Go Vocal, who help local authorities engage their communities in public decision-making. The council worked with Go Vocal on engagement to support the development of local play parks. The approach included joint workshops and the co-design of a new digital platform to gather and share feedback. The focus was to give local residents, especially parents and carers, an easy way to share their views on developing local play parks. Building on the Round 2 work, Go Vocal developed an API Connector (Application Programming Interface) for Round 3. The idea was to link response data to integrated reporting dashboards so that planners and senior managers in the council could easily keep up to date with the latest local residents’ feedback.
Results
The Go Vocal platform delivered an encouraging increase in resident engagement, and there was evidence of increased diversity of responses for consultations, particularly attracting an uplift in responses from a younger demographic. Since implementation, over 1,300 individuals have registered on the platform. Of these participants, over half (52%) were aged 40 and under, representing a notable increase in engagement with this age group overall.
The API Connector developed for the pilot meant that as data was received, it was automatically connected to reporting dashboards. This delivered significant improvements to the way consultation feedback was processed at the council and replaced the manual approach with real-time reporting. This meant that keeping up to speed with the latest view of responses and sentiment was easy, removing the need to wait until the consultation end for feedback. Strategic decision-making also improved as the need for bespoke reports to be created for senior managers was removed, as members of the council could be given direct access to the dashboard for an instant view.
Havant Borough Council used the Go Vocal API Connector tool for 15 consultations and found that it delivered close to £3,285 in time savings. This was possible because the work to process the feedback data and produce reports was automated, rather than needing planning resources to process the data manually. The calculation was based on two hours per project charged at £27 per hour and five hours per project charged at £33 per hour for data processing tasks requiring planning officers with different levels of experience. A typical year involves five consultation projects, so an annual saving of at least £1095 is anticipated through the tool. The tool has now become a well-established part of the council’s engagement methods.
Havant Borough Council noted the value of the tool was considerably higher than these time savings alone. The tool is particularly beneficial for gathering and assimilating feedback. Go Vocal allows for two-way interaction on engagement projects, while also enabling the dynamic and visual display of often complex information. The tool has fostered a positive and constructive relationship with respondents, as officers are able to interact with them to understand their viewpoint in more detail. This has helped create a more positive sentiment overall around council engagement projects.
The pilot has delivered a foundational layer of data which the tool can access and link to reporting dashboards, so it’s now much simpler and easier to run consultations. This means that feedback can be gathered more quickly for small changes requested by local communities, such as a vacant shop scheme and a ‘pocket park’ approach to increase green space in urban areas. The Go Vocal tool has improved the quality of engagement conducted by the council and is embedded as part of the methods offered to residents to shape and influence local decision-making. This is further enhanced by the more effective and efficient way in which data is accessed as enabled by the pilot.
Next steps
Looking forward, the council will seek to continue to develop Go Vocal as a central engagement tool in engaging with communities, and further automate processes for analysis and reporting where possible. It’s a promising picture for the council’s work with Go Vocal and further refinements to deliver scaled savings outside of Havant Borough Council are being planned.