UK Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) 
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Challenge
Cornwall Council wanted to increase engagement in their planning consultations and established in earlier PropTech Innovation Funding rounds that developing digital 3D (3 dimensional) and virtual reality tools could play a valuable role in attracting feedback from a wider demographic.
Cornwall Council secured £365,000 of Round 3 PropTech Innovation funding to enhance the 3D virtual reality model of Newquay developed in Round 2 for the new Mid Cornwall Metro route. The proposed rail upgrade aims to transform travel across Cornwall by improving the links between Cornwall’s largest towns such as Newquay, St Austell, Truro and Falmouth/Penryn. It’s a significant development requiring multiple consultations.
Analysis showed that the majority of respondents to Cornwall Council’s online consultations to date were over the age of 40, with a lower response rate for each descending age bracket. This project was seen as an opportunity to explore whether virtual reality tools could increase engagement and the diversity of consultation responses for this important development project.
Approach
The pilot focused on joint work between Cornwall Council and their partner Digital Urban to establish a Cornwall-wide 3D model landscape with a baseline level of detail. The aim was for new projects to be able to commission enhanced detail and 3D experiences for consultations in defined areas to make it easier for citizens to visualise and experience proposals in an immersive way and share their feedback.
Cornwall Council worked with Digital Urban to create pop-up engagement events, inviting citizens including school children to attend and try out the virtual reality hot air balloon ride they’d developed, ‘flying’ over the route of the proposed metro and offering interactive information about the rail upgrade. An interactive media table was also developed by Digital Urban for Cornwall Council, to show the before and after view of the impact the Mid Cornwall Metro would have on high streets. It promoted a feeling of co-design with proposed changes shown from a birds-eye and street-level perspective.
Results
“I go to so many public engagement events where it’s really difficult to get people involved, get people interested in what’s happening. And yet here today I’m seeing crowds of people here till 9 o’clock at night, having fun, going on virtual balloon tours around Cornwall, playing on the virtual computer games…running up and down the ‘streets’. But they’re actually getting a chance to experience what it’s like to live in their town as it will be. I’ve never seen engagement like this!”
Cornwall Councillor, Richard Williams-Pears
The pilot’s pop-up engagement events were very well attended with over 400 people coming along – the virtual reality experiences were in constant use and warmly received. The events and tools helped to deliver a broader diversity of responses – a 10% increase in responses from people aged under 40 was achieved. 36% of attendees reported that they had never attended a consultation event or commented on a planning proposal prior to this event.
The virtual reality balloon ride was the most positively regarded feature of the consultation events and sentiment for it was 75% positive compared to 51% for traditional methods such as display boards. Also positively regarded were the opportunities for discussions with council officers supported by the information offered at the newly developed interactive media table.
Next Steps
The pilot has been so successfully completed with the proven benefits of the 3D model, that Digital Urban and Cornwall Council are committing their own time and budget to continue the project and continue delivering benefits. The 3D model is still in use across the area, being continually built upon by Cornwall Council. It is hosted by Digital Urban, as more work is done to understand how it can enrich other planning processes and decisions. Discussions are already underway for further citizen engagement events relating to the Mid Cornwall Metro scheme and for other transport-led schemes such as the Active Travel Scheme in Cornwall in Falmouth and the subsidised bus transport initiative in Cornwall.