Dorset Council Local Plan Blog – How to get people to take part in a planning consultation.

I’m Fiona King, Senior Communications Officer at Dorset Council. I’m leading on the communications for Dorset Council’s very first Local Plan.

When I work on a project, I like to embed myself in the team. Spend time in their space. I start to understand their work, the issues and the pressures. Due to a worldwide pandemic I’ve been unable to use access this rich source of information. But the team working on the plan have been great. Through Teams meetings, channels and chats we have been able to understand how we all fit, like a jigsaw puzzle, together.

The comms plan felt much more like a marketing plan. It had objectives to widen the age range of respondents and to help increase the understanding of what planning is about.  There was a lot of number crunching to develop tactics that would reach geographically into the depths of Dorset and encourage all ages to spend time answering questions about homes, renewable energies and industrial areas.

The stats lead me to use new advertising platforms to get into those hard to reach audiences. People who are living in rental properties, those who access everything through their phones, young people and families. People who will see the benefit of 17 years of plan.

But we didn’t forget the traditional responders. We used traditional media, town and parish magazines, our own Dorset Council News, posters and an order and collect service from the libraries. Advertising on local community radio stations backed up with interviews also helped to attract these demographics.

The only channel that we were unable to use was face to face meetings and exhibitions. Using mosaic data and looking at communication preferences I was able to make sure that people who would have liked to attend these were able to get information in another way.

We used several free to use channels too. Our own social media channels, including YouTube for webinar videos and Anchor for podcasts. Interestingly we had all ages listening to the podcasts with the largest age group being over 60yrs.

The backbone of the communications plan was a response hierarchy model (AIDA – PR Smith, marketing communications). This suggests that we can direct people through complex behaviour change needed to take part in the consultation. People tend to go through a series of stages before they reach the required action. That is there is not one tactic that will make a person act.

We received and are still receiving a lot of criticism about conducting this consultation in a pandemic, and for not challenging Government targets. I’m not going to get political here – we are where we are and like all UK residents must abide by the laws of the land. The best chance to preserve this beautiful county, that I was blessed to be born in, is to make sure that development is planned, appropriate and fit for purpose.

As for conducting the consultation in a pandemic well, the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. We received over 60,000 comments from 9,000 respondents. We had responses from an 11-year-old and an 85-year-old and all ages in between.

But the work doesn’t stop there. We are continuing to explain planning, what it is and what it isn’t, how it can help build sustainable communities. The Dorset Council Local Plan has a long way to go through the examination by the Planning Inspector to final adoption in two years. And we will continue building upon our learning and reaching out to help our communities have their say in the future of Dorset.