Planning consultation beyond the town hall.

By Stephen Gregory – Account Director

In the world of planning communications, we are always asking ourselves the same question: how can we get more representative community involvement in consultations? 

The root of the problem is easy to pin down: most of us lead busy lives, so finding the time to visit a consultation event or sit down and read a newsletter just isn’t a priority. The result? Consultation responses can be skewed towards demographics who prefer these more traditional methods of consultation. 

So what’s the answer? We need to take planning communications to social media. That doesn’t mean a quick 1020×1020 Facebook ad; it means creating content that someone will want to engage with. We need to stop treating social media as a platform for advertising, and instead, make it a place to learn and feed back without leaving the platform. 

Across Cavendish, we’ve been tooling up to achieve this, and we’re seeing the fruits of this labour. 

In a recent masterplanning consultation in West Suffolk, we produced short-form social content using CapCut – TikTok’s proprietary video editing software. Sending two of our team to the site, the former Rougham Airfield, armed with only their phones, a tripod, and an autocue, it was the work of just a few hours to shoot several short form clips directly in front of the Airfield’s local landmark – its well preserved control tower. The result? We created content that introduced the consultation in a compelling, personal way which immediately connected to the local community. 

The clips were posted on Facebook and Instagram, and anyone who engaged with them was directed to a punchy survey, hosted within the platforms using our own software. Using short form, user-generated content, and embedding information about the proposal and the accompanying survey into social media feeds resulted in feedback from a far more diverse range of people than we have historically achieved through traditional consultation methods. 

44% of the survey respondents were under 55, and the feedback received was genuinely constructive, including insights which correlated with the younger demographic – for instance, parks and play spaces were the most common response to the question ‘What do you think is most important for creating a successful place?’ 

A social media-centric approach to consultation also costs less – in both financial and environmental terms – than traditional engagement: for the Rougham Airfield consultation, a spend of under £300 on social media advertising allowed us to reach 26,000 people in the local area. 

As we continue to strive for meaningful, representative consultation, we will continue to push ourselves and our clients to get real about social media, and bring consultation directly onto devices.