we're at one minute past 10 we have over 200  300 400... I'm seeing it jump up now... people  
0:10
joining us so we are literally testing the  boundaries of digital engagement in action   and as we begin today's session I just want  to say welcome to the proptech engagement  
0:21
fund round one showcase my name is Bridget  Wilkins and on behalf of the digital planning  
0:26
and wider team at the Department for Levelling  up Housing and Communities it is so exciting  
0:31
to host today's event and facilitate what i  think will be a really interesting discussion  
0:37
between both our panel presenters and also wider  audience here joining us today as well  
0:45
in the spirit of digital engagement we'd love this session to be as interactive   and as open as possible uh and so we'll be  pasting a link to menti in the chat now and  
0:54
we'd love to hear from the audience joining us today on where you're coming from the industry   the current roles that you have working across  the sector and what you're looking to get out  
1:03
of today's session so please do respond to the menti link that we pasted in the chat this morning  
1:09
and it doesn't work for you please do share an introduction of yourself in the wider teams chat  
1:15
can I also ask that everyone's microphone is on mute and if possible we'd love to see you  
1:21
on your camera as well so do put those on so we can see who's joining us here today - next  
1:26
slide please Lou - we have a jam-packed agenda this morning and we're going to do our best   to facilitate and keep the time across different  speakers from a range of local authorities in  
1:39
England as well and we recognize that many of the conversations today are a starting point  
1:44
for the dialogue of how we can work together across the industry and really use this moment  
1:49
of time to build momentum on the need to engage citizens in more inclusive and transparent ways  
1:56
we will be pasting a link again to use menti to respond to any q & a we have in the session and we  
2:03
welcome your questions throughout the conversation today, we might not get to all of them but  
2:09
hopefully we can respond to as many as possible and we can use today as a really opportunistic  
2:14
moment in time to carry the conversation forward across the industry and across our different roles  
2:19
in planning urban regeneration and housing delivery and I think testament to that is   the number of people joining us today live on  this event which I think is at 500 people now  
2:29
great to see we'll see how teams goes and the 800 people who have registered for this event  
2:36
really validating the desire and the appetite to use digital citizen engagement in the planning and  
2:42
housing delivery process when we talk about that mission and vision for digital citizen engagement  
2:48
what's really exciting is how we're building that out together across the industry - next   slide - and some of the work that we're doing  to work with alongside the PropTech market local  
2:58
authorities and wider stakeholders to make the planning system more accountable more democratic  
3:03
and more transparent and hopefully offer viable scalable methods of engaging citizens and having  
3:10
new conversations alongside those more traditional forms of engagement what's really exciting is how  
3:16
we're bringing this vision to life through our work in the PropTech engagement fund and working  
3:21
with an amazing group of local authorities in round one and round two to really test and  
3:27
validate and challenge some of the assumptions inherent in this vision for citizen engagement   and to evolve them as well and so I just wanted to acknowledge a number of the authorities working in  
3:37
round one many of whom you'll hear from today and the PropTech companies that they've been working   with as well and so with that we'd love to open up for the next part of our event I'm just checking  
3:49
on teams we've got a few hands up here making  sure everyone can see our screen and hear us okay  
3:56
please let us know if we can't and is that we're  just thinking here just bear with us one moment...
4:12
Brilliant thanks everyone we're just  seeing how teams has gone with 549 people  
4:18
at last count and so with that we'd love  to open it up for a wider conversation and  
4:25
hear from local authorities who are joining us  here today and begin our LPA showcase first up  
4:32
we have Joanna from Cotswolds, Joanna I'll pass to  you for the first presentation thank you very much
4:41
Thank you Bridget um my name is Jo I work for  Publica which actually looks after a series  
4:48
of partner councils one of which is Cotswold  district council which we took part in this round  
4:54
one pilots for, I'm just going to share my screen  and then hopefully not bore you all with my slides
5:08
so we were awarded the funding under the  kind of local plan regulation 18 stage we  
5:17
during the consultation we had over  2900 comments left on the site from  
5:25
755 individuals and organisations and also  during that six week period we had over  
5:32
six and a half thousand visits to the  consultation website which sort of represents   approximately seven percent of the district's  population I'll show you the site quickly
5:51
so this is sort of a brief introduction and  then we divided up our paper in a series of  
5:56
slides and sorry... series of tiles that  then contain questions and you can see  
6:04
the numbers of comments we had you can  see how many people liked other comments  
6:09
if you were a individual and you wanted to  go in and see what other people have said   you can just click on that little button and  then read away I'm gonna come back to my slides
6:24
So what surprised us most I think first of all was  the kind of nearly 30% increase in the number of  
6:32
subscribers so we started with an existing list  of people that had signed up to stay notified  
6:39
of the local plan and associated documents  but that actually grew by 646 individuals and  
6:46
organizations again over that six week period  we often saw that the inbuilt functionality  
6:55
within our chosen platform actually drove a lot  of that growth another one a lot of people were  
7:03
very concerned in our organization that by moving  to more digital it would actually put off the kind  
7:09
of what's seen as the older age group um forgive  me i don't think over 55 is particularly old  
7:16
but we actually saw that more than 55 of all  of our respondents online were 55 and over
7:28
again this wasn't me so much but this was  my kind of planning policy manager and   we were seeing an increasing extension  of time requests from statutory bodies  
7:37
to respond so they were asking for continuing  extensions of time not such a big issue at the reg  
7:45
18 stage but obviously when we get to the reg 19  that's going to mean kind of in fairness extending  
7:52
closing dates for everybody not  just those sort of statutory bodies
7:59
should I keep going or any questions at  this point? keep going another thing we  
8:05
were very pleased about was the positive uptake  in residents using the digital sp tool to respond  
8:12
and the reduction in the use of more  traditional methods of email and letters  
8:19
I'll focus on that one a little in a moment  and also the kind of continuing reluctance of  
8:24
professional planning and the development industry  to use the provided digital online platform  
8:32
so focusing a bit more on that kind of stat around   the take-up of using the new digital engagement  platform when we did a direct comparison to the  
8:43
last time although it was quite a few years part  of the similar issues and options consultation  
8:48
you can see from this graph here that it's almost  a straight swap in the methods used to contribute
8:58
and overall that represents a 74 decrease in  respondents using email and letter to respond  
9:05
which actually when you start thinking about that  in real terms and the kind of burden of admin to  
9:11
enter all of those representations into a system  so before you can analyse that actually really  
9:17
works out as a 74 decrease in office the time  that's required to enter those types of responses
9:30
how did we kind of drive the engagement to the  site and everything? We're very fortunate to have  
9:35
an excellent communications team which within it  hold lots of social media specialists etc so they  
9:44
put together a really professional six-week social  media campaign um it reached over 196 000 accounts  
9:52
with more than 27 000 views the other method that  got a lot of responses was by using the inbuilt  
10:02
email and sharing tools and I think we had a  click contribution rate from all emails sent of 11  
10:10
and we were also able to create an animation and  use the use of films and sit them straight on our  
10:17
consultation site and we also took the opportunity  to do a full local plan sub brand for the council  
10:26
and this was embedded across all the  social media, you can see down the bottom  
10:35
posters pull up banners sort of in person  out of home media was all branded up  
10:41
these kind of icons are now sort of brand  associated with local plan across the  
10:46
district and this is something we've had really  positive response from but I would just say do  
10:53
not underestimate the amount of time it takes to  kind of work up with designers this kind of stuff  
11:00
which brings me on to um what we wish we knew  from the start um I'd say one of the biggest ones  
11:08
was what well we're in the situation where  the document had to have been written  
11:14
along with the questions and put through our  democratic services system so it had already   been passed by cabinet so we were unable to  really tweak the way we ask questions hugely  
11:26
um so if we knew what the system was capable  of before we'd written the document i think  
11:33
we would have come at it from a more simplified  version and also asked more data kind of output  
11:40
based questions rather than more traditional  free text um again as we kind of went from
11:52
we didn't spend enough time with our town and  parish councils and other organizations before   we went live to kind of help guide them  with how we how they respond as a group  
12:02
and so that's something to definitely bear  in mind we were able though to kind of max   out the flexibility of the system and add an  additional place for town and parish councils and  
12:12
organizations to respond with extra guidance in  there for them on the site during the consultation  
12:20
and again this is more sort of as a  tension between the planning professionals  
12:26
and that's about how far you feel you  really can simplify the content down on   your sites without being criticized about hiding  information or being misleading but also without  
12:38
over complicating and bombarding people with too  much information obviously there's also the fear  
12:44
that if you don't ask enough or give people enough information   then that could actually catch you out by  the time you get to examination um again  
12:55
slightly linking to the first point um the capabilities of our platform commonplace and how  
13:02
they will present the data is really powerful especially when you're asking kind of more data  
13:09
select questions and it will actually produce all the charts and everything for you which   massively reduce the amount of time it took from  the analysis part of post close of consultation  
13:24
i would also say that   be aware that it takes a long time and it takes a lot of investment into creating easy to use simple  
13:35
attractive content and i kind of wish we'd been a bit more aware about the time  
13:42
that it takes to make things look visually engaging um before we started and that's me.
13:51
Joanna that was brilliant and perfectly on time thank you so much you get a gold star thank you  
13:58
for running through that I know we've had some chat here around some of the slides freezing so we   will be sure to share this with anyone who wasn't  able to see that but thank you for running through  
14:07
um and keeping to time much appreciated and we'll respond to some of the questions
14:12
I'm not sharing my screen anymore am I? no you're not you're perfect thank you so much  
14:19
thank you i am just going to go quickly back to Simon Gallagher who uh was with us at the start uh  
14:24
and because we were having some teams issues here we're able to bring in so Simon I'll go to you and   then we can go uh to the team at Chesterfield for the next showcase for those joining Simon  
14:35
Gallagher is the director of uh planning reform at the department for levelling up and it's great to   have him here this morning just to share briefly some opening reflections on how this work is  
14:45
informing the wider levelling up and regeneration bill agenda Simon uh pending teams working over  
14:50
to you... Bridget can you hear me? yes and thank you very much for everybody for giving up the time  
14:59
this morning to join in this conversation this is the exciting real conversation about planning   reform I think and I'm really pleased that you're there this is the work that I'm most excited about  
15:09
that we're doing at the moment um you know there is things we need to do to the law obviously  
15:14
but the really exciting things that we need to do are bringing planning services into the and to  
15:22
seize the benefits of new technologies let me just say a little bit about that but if you look  
15:27
at what has happened to public services across the last few decades they have been transformed  
15:35
almost beyond recognition whether you look at sort of how you do tax returns for those who are lucky   enough to do that or universal credit applications  or tell us once services you know these things have  
15:47
moved on light years in very different ways you  know it's probably not the fashionable application  
15:53
example at the moment but passport services how  those work now um uh in relation in comparison to  
15:59
what they were sort of 20 years ago it's  been transformed and made user-led and it's  
16:05
designed for the benefit of the applicant not the benefit of the service that's   being provided there um i think there's a massive opportunity to do the same thing for planning  
16:17
this is one of those key services it doesn't affect everybody in the country at all times   but it affects a lot of people and there is and development in your area effects  
16:28
affects almost everyone so i think this is a real chance to seize the best and of technology but  
16:35
also work with um this sort of community both of local government and the tech experts to see  
16:43
if there is a way we can do this in a really exciting way and I'm proud of the work that   the team are doing and are curating but I'm most proud of everybody um who's on this call who's  
16:54
sort of engaging in this because i think there's a real thing for the uk in that if we can be the  
17:00
one of the first people to do this this will also help create some world-leading tech companies that  
17:05
will um will be able to sell their great services around the world the bit i just wanted to say  
17:13
the way I'm thinking about what we're trying to do in digital services   for planning is in three buckets there is a bucket which is really about the core of the  
17:25
planning application process where so many local authorities are
17:32
tied into old systems which are producing   quite a dated process with a whole load of problems that come out of that and it is designed  
17:43
not around the user or the applicant it's almost designed around the provider there and i think   there is something where we can where we can  modernize those services design out costs design  
17:52
out rework design out re-keying and deliver some real efficiencies and i think that is great.  
17:59
we can also in doing that unlock so much data from that those services and make that available  
18:06
to everybody in the in the country so that the planning goes back to what it was originally  
18:12
um as a great source of data uh and data science um the second thing i think we're trying to  
18:19
do is those local plans that the local authorities are producing to move those away from being  
18:27
you know paper-based documents locked away in  pdf files being actually sets of data that are  
18:34
capable of being used and engaging and um for  people to understand what is happening in their  
18:41
areas and i think that is you know our vision is  for plans to be not lawyers documents written on  
18:50
pdf files and put on shells but to be actually the  tool which is engageable and understandable for  
18:57
the community which i think is a really exciting  uh exciting step and we shall see where with how  
19:04
far we can drive ourselves collectively along  that and then the final of my three buckets is  
19:10
and that's very much what Bridget wants to talk  about today is really about the engagement um  
19:16
side of things in that one of the things about  planning services and which distinguishes it from  
19:21
sort of passport applications is it's not just a  bilateral transaction between the individual and  
19:27
the state it's more about the community and how  the community needs to engage and interact and  
19:32
that you want to do something to your property or  on a piece of land well it affects people around  
19:39
you and so we need to bring those third parties  into the discussion and the really exciting thing  
19:45
and it's great to hear that presentation from um Cotswolds others of you doing this is how we can do  
19:51
that in a more exciting and modern way through new  tech which enables us to reach different people  
20:00
including people who are traditionally not the  people who engage with planning services can this  
20:06
really reach people with different backgrounds  who aren't as okay with um complicated legally  
20:14
worded documents and who have got that it can engage in different parts of their time uh rather  
20:20
than turning up for for um for meetings or things  it's you know can we do something here which  
20:26
make really democratizes um planning it really  brings in different people's voices into this  
20:33
but can we also find a way of doing this in  a way that um actually helps the community to  
20:40
come together and find it out where it agrees and  finds consensus rather than just having that sort  
20:47
of slightly polarizing debate that you get around  planning at the moment which is don't like or like  
20:53
um more often don't like and can we use this to  actually get people to actually have in those  
20:59
sort of discursive and deliberative ways of  coming together and find consensus about we don't  
21:04
like that but we prefer this we don't want to  do this thing but we wouldn't really like it if  
21:11
it was like this and this is our priorities now  those things are really powerful if we can get   those and we can really harness those things  and we aren't going to know those from Whitehall  
21:22
we are only going to know those if we can tap  into the wisdom of the crowd and gosh you are a  
21:29
crowd this morning um and sorry for if for the  pains of teams in in this moment but that that's  
21:35
why I really want to tap into this group I don't  know what this looks like I have no idea what  
21:41
good looks like I have no idea what um great  looks like and have no idea what is going to work   we're only going to find that out by testing by  experimenting and bringing in the best of the  
21:50
public and the private sectors to bring it  to work so I am absolutely delighted we've   got this discussion today um Bridget and  team are doing brilliant work to curate this but  
22:00
i really want to emphasize that this is not  government doing stuff and doing it to you we're  
22:05
we're going to sort of help and curate but our  job is to create this community of practice  
22:10
who are interested in this space to try lots  of experiments except that some of them will fail  
22:17
um and won't work brilliantly to build on the  best and so that in five years time what we've  
22:23
got is something that is really working for  all of our communities so with that i'm going to  
22:29
shut up and hand back to the people  who know much more about this   and how about Bridget to get you and the team to  do this i'm really excited by this work I want to  
22:38
wish everybody in this good good discussion today  um please get the conversation going between you  
22:44
yourselves please please do share expertise in  this one um this is this is as i say where our  
22:51
job is just to convene bring you together  and encourage and share some of their ideas  
22:58
back to you Bridget Thank you so much Simon  brilliant and it's great to hear of the of the wider ambitions there across the team so thank  you for for joining us this morning and i think  
23:07
that's a great segway into uh the next presentation  from Anthony and Alan from Chesterfield where  
23:13
they were having a really interesting case study  looking at planning data and uh using proptech and  
23:19
a digital platform to engage different members of  the community to inform their uh local plans and  
23:25
call for sites so anthony over to you hey there  thank you very much hello everybody lovely to  
23:31
see everyone and thank you johanna for your last  presentation i'll see if i can make the tech work  
23:37
can can you hear me okay we can hear you excellent  it's a great start that is a really good start um
23:52
can you see my slide
23:57
we can see your slides brilliant two gold stars  it's all working that's it i can i've succeeded  
24:05
i can go home now um smashing so uh i'll try  to stick to eight minutes um so my name is tony  
24:13
wallace principal planning officer at chesterfield  borough council and it's a market town in  
24:19
Derbyshire and we managed to win the funding we've  worked with a company called urban intelligence  
24:25
that we we got through open tender and and we  won the project to work on our call for sites  
24:31
and off the back of that our land availability  assessment as well so the main thing was   the core for sites but as you'll see  there's been some some added benefits  
24:40
too from that so i shall um i shall move on but  before i say that maybe explain the call for sites  
24:47
it's where the council goes out to ask and  publicly for people to put forward sites that  
24:52
they think are okay for development or different  uses and so move on so biggest surprise to us was  
25:01
despite reading around doing our homework you know  speaking to authorities and there's still so much  
25:07
to learn it's just incredible and it's not just  in terms of what the digitech can do and but you  
25:14
know how we can change our own practice as well  so not not just making the digitech um fit with  
25:21
existing ways of doing things but to actually  change the way we do things to work to and that  
25:28
was quite a surprise for us so what we did was  we actually changed the way we did our call for  
25:35
site so we didn't just use the digitech we changed  the way we did things the way we did this was and  
25:42
we had a website we did traditional notifications  by letter we did a lot of social media repetition  
25:50
and but we had um from urban intelligence at some  software that allowed us to have this landing page  
25:57
and we created a different route um for members  of the public to put forward sites as part of  
26:04
the call for sites now traditionally um we the  response we got would be landowners um agents  
26:12
developers and they'd have to fill in quite  a long form and now we opened up this other  
26:18
route and we didn't you know developers could use  this but um it was aimed at members of the public  
26:25
and we sort of called it the call for sites light  so they got to click on this left hand option  
26:32
the next step they got was um the ability to  select their site whether it was by selecting  
26:39
a pre-made polygon the land registry title or  drawing the polygon themselves once you've done  
26:45
that the next step they got was a shortish list of  land users that we suggested we explained what the  
26:54
land use was because retail might mean a lot  of things to a lot of people but as planners  
26:59
we have our own idea what that means and and  we gave the option of a free-form text there  
27:06
and for other land users so we didn't want to  restrict what people were telling us the ability   to upload the videos and once that was done  people could review what they submitted delete  
27:18
submissions before the end of the consultation and  and just for joanne harding if she's there i've  
27:24
spotted a question and you could open up a form so  you could you could review it in form version and  
27:31
and that was supposed to work for the developers  we had a bit of a problem with that but you were   supposed to be able to review and look at this you  could you could pass it to your client or whatever  
27:43
and so that's what we did so what  did it result in so in terms of  
27:50
the sites submitted by the public in  2016 when we did it without digi tech  
27:57
one percent of the sites we got were for  members of the public flick all for science   this time around 64 of the sites we didn't get  a drop in in the number of sites we actually  
28:08
got more sites this time around we didn't get  a drop in the number of um contributions from   developers and landowners but we got more  public people sorry more public submitting
28:19
now in terms of how people submitted   previously 2016 85 were by email with pdfs  or word documents or images this time around  
28:33
84 so they're almost the same we're by the this  online version that you see in this this software
28:42
so in terms of submissions before digi  tech mostly housing sites came forward  
28:48
this time around we've got a broad mix there  of housing sites nature enhancement sites  
28:53
are biodiversity receptor sites and a whole  mix of other uses so was quite interesting   and in terms of what we did back office i know  it's about helping the public but boy did it  
29:03
help us as well which is kind of nice these  are all the different sort of systems we have  
29:09
we used before the post scanning documents  access excel don't talk to each other that's  
29:16
picture of me very sad this time around process  was much easier because place maker although the  
29:23
software we've got from urban intelligence takes  the data straight away once the public's done it   online we have it straight away and it organizes  it for us we can access it and we can analyze it  
29:35
so i'm going to give you hopefully now a very  quick demo if i can do this of placemaker so  
29:41
this is what happens when we get the data  from the public just to show that we got  
29:46
something more than just the engagement side  of things let's see if i can make this work
29:54
can you see that Bridget everybody see that i  hope you can see that so you can see it excellent  
30:00
the day it comes in there it is all ready for  us those are our call for site submissions  
30:06
we can click on a site we can look at it and  there's tabs here which we're working with urban  
30:13
intelligence to play around with and so things  like we get an automatic assessment of suitability  
30:19
against all the constraints that we put on  ourselves and link to say the environment  
30:25
agency a live link there to the flood risk data  got our planning policies in we create rules and  
30:32
it does if you like stage one of land availability  assessment for us almost instantly and it can do  
30:37
that for um any sites or all the land parcels  we've got a land registry data in there as well  
30:43
in the borough got accessibility score and it  has the ability to do that too and it shows  
30:50
us if i do this without showing the the phone  number there it shows us the data that's coming  
30:55
from the um the public or developer the agent as  well it's all there for us on our call for sites  
31:02
form so there we go if i can close that so
31:09
what we wish we'd known and what kind of the  big big lessons for us you know really do your  
31:16
best to get clued up not just on one thing like  engagement but about all the other things you do  
31:22
and you know as a service because the digi tech  can probably help not just with one aspect but  
31:30
across the board we've looked at all sorts of  things like um answering inquiries um handling our  
31:36
data and our gis pre-apps validation app called  sites and we're looking to see how this can now  
31:43
work for us through the local plan stages as well  also give yourself plenty of time if you can don't  
31:50
rush in terms of getting the software and having  time to test it and agree with your provider  
31:55
to do the testing perfect it before going  live and remain agile and get on top of any  
32:03
problems that happen while you're doing the  consultation straight away talk to people   and do the user feedback before um again before  you do it and while you're doing it and change  
32:15
things based on that and one last thing if you  can get live late data links for your data that  
32:21
you're using from other systems and work that  out before you you choose your software find  
32:27
out if you can get those and optimize it  for your mobile phone and and that's me  
32:33
that's me done i'll stop sharing if i can bang on  time anthony another gold star thank you so much  
32:40
there was so much there and i've seen a brilliant  amount of questions come through so i appreciate  
32:45
you doing a whistle stop tour and including some  emojis along the way just to keep it engaging   thank you thank you everybody thanks so much  brilliant well we're going to go to our last  
32:55
showcase now before we open up the door wider q and a  and so i'd love to invite Carmel from watford  
33:01
to share your screen and talk us through  your project that you worked on in round one
33:08
morning i'm Carmel Huntley from watford  borough council just gonna share my screen now
33:18
can you see that we can see it okay great okay  um it's not let me turn my camera on for some  
33:24
reason but i'll go ahead with my slides um okay so  i was a project manager for round one of proptech  
33:29
engagement fund here at watford borough council  so we started last october and it ran till april  
33:35
this year and so we were focusing on planning  publicity for dm and we wanted to explore using  
33:42
digital tools to make it radically easier for  people to find out about planning applications  
33:48
and increase public participation  from a broader audience of people
33:54
so the aim of our project here was to remove  unintentional barriers that we believe prevent  
34:01
people from engaging with the planning process and  we also wanted it to make it a bit more accessible  
34:07
for members of the public so the two issues that  we were aiming at was people that are not notified  
34:13
of development and people that find the engagement  process just too difficult to understand  
34:19
so we broke that down into four objectives and our first objective we worked with esri  
34:25
and we've built a new platform now on our  on our website where members of the public   can register to receive planning alerts by  email for a specific area of their choice  
34:34
so it just enables people to self-serve be kept  informed of new planning applications submitted   within their chosen area without relying on  on us to send them a letter or seeing a site  
34:44
notice or newspaper advert and it also removes the  burden of initiating publicity from from us so we  
34:51
still get quite a few calls um at watford where  people you know for our householder applications  
34:58
we only tend to inform the joining neighbors  for those and we still get quite a few calls  
35:04
asking why they haven't been informed so  now we've got this alert service which is   working really well we've got a lot of take up on  it where people can just sign up for alerts and  
35:14
be notified so this is about getting that broad  borders of people and making people feel more  
35:20
informed so yeah this is just our website and  now it's just there's an option there for   people to register for planning alerts and  we've done some marketing around this and  
35:29
put it on the end of all our emails and things so  yeah that's our first thing um objective two  
35:36
so we we worked with commonplace and again we just  wanted to create a central place on our website  
35:42
where people could look at our major planning  applications so again it's just about trying   to reach this broader audience of people because  these applications you know you don't necessarily  
35:51
have to live near these ones to be interested in  them you know this is our sort of new hospital  
35:56
it's um the landmark site within our bar so it's  just about giving people somewhere that where  
36:02
they can go to just have a browse through what  what there is there and engage people that way  
36:07
so we worked with commonplace to  do this um and they built us a  
36:14
a new a new platform so when people click on  that it would bring them to this new platform  
36:20
and you'd be able to see me up majors sort  of scattered on a map which you could hover   or just below there'd be a toll view for each  application and but what we also did with this  
36:30
site was explored how we could use modern digital  tools and just to make it look nicer for people  
36:37
and so when you click into a tile here well so  we use public access at the moment with idocs  
36:43
and this is sort of a current landing page for  a planning application what you what you'd see   and when you click into an application firearm  the commonplace site you'd see this so it  
36:55
was about just pulling out the the information  that people want to see so you've still got your  
37:01
site address reference number and what type  of development it is but we've pulled out how   many stories is it how many units is it so people  don't have to trawl through documents to find this  
37:09
information um and and we've added the visuals so  they can just scroll through these visuals so it's  
37:16
just clearer for people what development this  is and it makes them easier it's easier for them  
37:22
to engage with again so a current documents  list via public access would look like this   
37:30
and we've just tried to add thumbnails and to  give a bit of a visual there and put in the   reading time so people can actually see how big  this document is before they want to download it  
37:41
again with the site notice we worked with  commonplace and um our old site notice was   on the left there and it was just about what can  we how can we make that look a bit more engaging  
37:51
and and they came up with the one on the  right so we've put our visuals in the map   qr code yeah and it's just we were just  exploring how how it could be more exciting
38:04
again with the 3D model so we worked with  view city and view city were able to work  
38:09
integrate with commonplace so when you viewed the  map via the platform there was a 3D tab and you  
38:16
could actually see the 3D model of the proposed  scheme there so again just making making  
38:21
it more visual for people what actually this  development is so yeah that's the commonplace site  
38:28
and then our third objective was just to introduce  the use of qr codes on all of our own publicity  
38:33
for all planning applications so now on all our  neighbor letters cite notices and paper adverts   we have qr codes just to try and improve that  accessibility for people um so yeah that would  
38:44
have just been our newspaper advert on the left  before um before and now after with the qr there  
38:50
and lastly again we we worked with esri  and we've just introduced a few new map tools  
38:57
onto our website just to encourage that visual  way for people to engage so um via the public  
39:04
access system you have to put in a reference  number or address off that main page so  
39:11
it was just about giving them a map tool so this  is an example of one of them so now there's a  
39:16
map tool and they can just pan the map zoom in and  out and then just follow the planning applications  
39:22
that are highlighted from the map from here   um so yeah they were our successes was the  four objectives that we managed to achieve  
39:30
and the biggest surprises uh for us was just  how restrictive access is to our own data  
39:38
via our back office system so and what we weren't  able to do with the commonplace sites that  
39:44
commonplace weren't able to integrate with with  idocs so it just meant a huge manual process for  
39:49
us because we were had basically duplicate systems  and were having to import and export the data  
39:55
so it just opened our eyes to the whole open  data issue at the moment within the sector  
40:02
um so yeah it just meant that going forward it  just wouldn't be something that we could do at  
40:09
the moment unless there's integration there um  again when i was wanting to look at website hits  
40:16
for uh to see the success of the qr codes we  just can't monitor any traffic on public access  
40:23
website pages because they're owned by idocs  um which was just a bit bit surprising um and  
40:29
then how restrictive our internal it was so we  were building these platforms and everything was  
40:35
working online absolutely fine but when we were  logging in via our vpn the maps wouldn't work  
40:42
and again the alerts emails would go to any email  address but not a watford.gov uk email address  
40:47
because there are firewalls were blocking them  so that was um just just required it resource um  
40:54
to sort those out um and then we also  explored using social media posts to  
41:00
try and engage people with planning applications  and this just did create a bit of a backlash um  
41:06
which was a bit of a surprise for me our comms  team were were a bit resistant they knew that   this was going to happen but it just appears to  be that when anything planning related is posted  
41:16
um it just created a lot of negative comments  and the opportunity for political jobs um  
41:24
and not really a surprise but no one under  35 in um engaged with our feedback survey  
41:32
um so the most effective way in driving engagement  was definitely the social media posts despite the  
41:37
negativity a little bit of negativity they caused  um yeah just nothing could match them um in terms  
41:43
of how much traffic they brought to the sites um  and then what lessons would i would i share that  
41:50
that i wish i'd have known at the start was just  definitely an awareness of of all this open data   and apis before procuring suppliers so um you know  had we have known that that it would have caused  
42:02
um so much manual resource um because there was  no integration it's just really um you just really  
42:07
need to be aware of that early on um and yeah just  i needed an internal project team so it started  
42:15
off just as me project managing but actually i  needed a wider team just for all these sorts of   issues um so that's really key and again i had  included our portfolio holder from the beginning  
42:27
but it's just great to have their support so when  we did have the social media backlash he knew  
42:32
what we were doing in planning with this project  and was able to support us with other members  
42:38
and yeah i would have just invested in targeted  engagement so even like the the age group there  
42:43
that we didn't manage to um to reach the under  35s i would have invested in um some targeted  
42:51
engagement with an external company to to deliver  that and just lastly just to finish off just a  
42:58
bit of community feedback was that whilst the  digital engagement tools are welcomed very  
43:04
much so um there were obviously comments that they  should still shouldn't replace traditional methods  
43:09
that are still very important for some people  people like to see a site notice on a lamp post  
43:15
um and definitely visual engagement is  key for people so where we did use images  
43:22
pull out relevant information qr code anything  that was making it easier easier and quicker for  
43:27
them to understand the information or to access  the information um everyone just loved it and we  
43:33
just had had a lot of great feedback about that  so yeah that's it from me thanks for listening  
43:38
and i'll hand back thank you brilliant carmel  thank you so much and can i ask our audience  
43:44
all 600 of us too if you can clap your hands  for our a brilliant uh showcase oh wonderful  
43:52
as we open up just for a really brief q and  a carmel thanks for thanks for whizzing through  
43:58
there's again so much there and we've probably  only got about five minutes or so for questions
44:03
so i will i i've been reading it here as a team  we will just go to all briefly with one or two and then we can follow up as much as we can after the  event as well i wanted to go to anthony first  
44:15
i think there's quite a few questions here around  automation and perhaps the time you think you've   saved in that call for science process using the  urban intelligence platform are you able to share  
44:26
any more reflections on that piece and how you think you might be able to you have  
44:31
automated that process yeah sure i think we saved  about in terms of the people submitting sites and  
44:38
faffing around with various different modes  of submission we say about two hours per site  
44:44
and so we figured out we'd save 224 hours  or something like that office of time for  
44:51
the submission that come in processing so yeah  massive and made it that easy really um i mean  
44:58
the word the time spent setting up the system you  have to put the hard work and the time and effort  
45:03
but once it's up and running and yeah massive  savings in time yeah it all comes in and i think  
45:11
the important thing is people being able to manage  their submissions and agents being able to see  
45:18
in a word document or pdf with the system see what  they've they've done on their web form because a  
45:24
web form gives you a page at a time they want  to see the whole thing send it to clients and  
45:29
share it and that sort of thing but in terms of  public it it's allowed us to get plenty of  
45:35
responses that we'd never known and can i go  off on a tangent and answer some other questions  
45:40
Bridget is that okay i'll give you another 30  seconds how about right what the question said   you know basically is the public sites that come  in rubbish you know basically are they any good  
45:49
well it wasn't the point you know it's people  engaging what they send in is data we can report  
45:55
back to members if people are telling us something  about something we can report that back to members  
46:01
so you know that that we found was was quite a  quite a good thing actually okay i'll shut up
46:10
brilliant thank you Anthony, Jo i might go  to you because i think it's an interesting   seg way you had such an amazing level of response  on the platform working with commonplace and the  
46:20
wider team would be good if you could share any  reflections just looking at the questions that are   coming through just about the wider engagement  and calm strategy that you undertook alongside  
46:29
building out that platform and perhaps how that  helped you connect with that broader audience
46:35
that's a lot there there was a large full-blown  comm strategy that sat alongside this consultation  
46:44
um which i would check with the comms  team if i'm allowed to share it but um   i'm quite happy to share a lot of that um but  we did do it wasn't all just digital and social  
46:54
media we did an all-district mail out so that  was a flyer that went through everybody's door  
47:00
there was a poster campaign across um that was put  up by our environmental services team and there  
47:07
were pull-up banners there were in-person events  it was like throw the kitchen sink at it really  
47:15
so there is a lot of that stuff as well  which obviously all costs money too  
47:21
so that's that's the very short and  sweet version of that but i can't yeah  
47:30
without the comms team it wouldn't have  been such a success and they were able to   help us like with the working with the  designers and drawing up the design briefs  
47:40
all that stuff so that took a lot of if you  like the pressure off of us from the build of  
47:47
the site and the the more kind of digital content  yeah i think i think that's it that's really  
47:55
interesting thanks jo i think we've seen a lot  of that uh coming through in other projects for   round one particularly um Grace at Wandsworth and  a few others in round two really focusing on that  
48:05
you know the value of good design and good quality  comms and and bringing that through and i think   testament to the results you achieved joanna on on  the commonplace platform is is that wider strategy  
48:14
to almost wrap around that that that digital  engagement piece um i'm going to go to carmel  
48:20
for a question there's been quite a few comments about qr codes i wonder if you can share  
48:26
just a little bit more reflections on how that  works and and it's great to see obviously  
48:32
that you're scaling that across to other parts  of of um planning information but uh it seems  
48:37
it's a it's a burning question from the audience  on on your use of those and where they were   effective and perhaps also some lessons learned  and how that wider engagement piece either  
48:47
did help connect with audiences or to your point  you know there's still a gap there isn't it with   with those younger audiences engaging and perhaps  there's some more work for us to do as an industry  
48:58
hi yeah the qrs actually were one of the  most simplest things of the of the whole  
49:04
thing so because you can do them via we had we  could do them via the uniform system that we use  
49:10
so actually it was a really quite quick process  and now they're just automatically generated with   the site notices as as they would be anyway with  the qr on so yeah just a really easy quick fix  
49:22
that makes us a bit more modernized for people  that want to use qr codes yeah had a bit of  
49:30
interesting feedback when we did the surveys  because people a few people said that they  
49:37
didn't know what qr codes were and actually it  brought me back because not everyone does know   what qr codes are so we then just put prompts  in on on our neighbor letters just to put a  
49:48
few sort of instructions on on what you how you  use the qr code so that was a bit of a reminder  
49:53
that not everyone does know what qr codes are and  not everyone is going to want to use them but um  
49:58
when i did one-to-one testing with with someone  and i i showed him it you know he was he thought   it was brilliant and now he'll use it so this is  the thing like people i think some people think  
50:07
they have to go into an app to scan a qr code  actually you can just do it off the camera of your   phone so it's just about educating as well  i think but definitely um allows people to  
50:16
access information quicker so that was where we  aimed it at so yeah brilliant thank you so much  
50:24
and there's still so many more questions coming  through but i'm conscious of time and we we will   now go to the next wider panel discussion  carmel joanna anthony thank you again so much  
50:35
and you know we will look forward to following  up with you and and sharing as much as we can with  
50:40
the audience here today i did also want to respond  to what i think is the number one question which   is will this event be recorded yes it's being  recorded we click the button and we will share  
50:49
slides where we can and follow information with  everyone attending here today because there's   there's just so much to to go through and to share  and with that we'd love to go to the next part  
50:59
of our discussion which is a bit more of a panel  conversation uh speaking to Helen from  Southampton City Council
51:06
Chris from Bolsover District Council and Louisa and Chris from London Borough of Hounslow - i invite you all to  
51:11
turn your cameras on and what we'll do for  the next 15-20 minutes is focus on you know i  
51:18
think some really interesting sections many of  you have had around building legacy and longer   term implementation of digital transformation  and digitizing the planning process learning from  
51:29
round one conscious some of you are also working  in round two but also working on other initiatives  
51:34
digitize the planning process it'd be great  to hear from you all on any reflections on how   you're taking some of these learnings forward  in your work um as we open up for the next 15  
51:44
20 minutes so what i'm going to do is Helen i'll  go to you and then Chris from Bolsover and then Louisa  
51:50
and Chris if you want to just spend two minutes  introducing yourself the project you're working  
51:55
on with a bit of a snapshot and then we  can open up for some more conversations   Helen i'll pass the mic thanks Bridget um yeah  i'm Helen i'm from Southampton city council  
52:06
um we received funding out for round one um  for reg 18. um we'd already done an initial  
52:12
consultation um in spring 2020 we used  a simple snap survey had a good response  
52:19
but we had the usual suspects underrepresented  so we wanted to find a platform that had a few  
52:24
more different tools things that were a bit more  engaging and see whether we could up our response   rates from children and young people and  people from black minority ethnic groups  
52:32
we went with bang the table and basically we  did a pilot consultation and we tried to use   as many of the tools on there as possible  so we've got polls we can drop pins on maps  
52:40
ideas boards survey questions we had to go with  all of those options so we could really assess  
52:47
what people were engaging with so we could take  that forward for our statutory regulating which   we're doing issues and options sort of  draft plan with options later this year  
52:57
we did have around 800  contributions on the consultation   but it didn't make any difference at all to those  two target groups so we did targeted social media  
53:08
but we we came up with the same results so in  terms of key learning i think in itself digital  
53:15
is not a solution we as i said we've tried  all the tools and particularly for children young  
53:20
people we think they're not really a self-serve  audience we can saturate social media but   actually they've got far more fun things that  they will look at the local plan let's be honest  
53:30
and the social media advertising that we did  pay for had quite a limited impact um in terms of  
53:37
the next steps and what this kind of discussion is  around is what we're learning from it and taking   forward is that as you go through a local plan  process engaging people is becoming increasingly  
53:47
difficult as those layers of detail have to be  added on from kind of getting issues and ideas   at the start through to a red line team and you've  got you know pre-submission plan and you've got to  
53:56
enable people to comment on any policy so it's  got me kind of having a rethink and how we kind of  
54:04
inform this policy going forward as we we think  more broadly about the planning reforms about what  
54:12
we actually want to achieve at reg 18 and reg19 so  from my perspective at reg 18 that seems a genuine  
54:20
ability for people to engage the wider public  so um you know it's about place shaping about  
54:26
getting communities involved whereas reg 19 seems  more like how we turn those that information into  
54:33
policy as professionals and do we need to think  more broadly about who we target those different   consultations at what we're trying to achieve  but also just picking up from simon's point at  
54:42
the beginning there around the need to  actually change the local plan itself is  
54:47
impenetrable to the vast majority of people and  so when you get a digital platform and you think   we know we've got to simplify it buy it strip down  the language ask as few questions as possible you  
54:57
just can't distill a local plan as is into that um  so that's my kind of big questions going forward  
55:04
that's very quick essentially it's amazing thank  you helen there's so much to unpack there and i  
55:10
know you know you've been a huge champion of  our work um so hopefully we can pick some of   that up in our discussion Chris - Chris from Bolsover just to clarify i'll go to you next  
55:19
thanks Bridget yeah hi everyone so yes we just a  little bit backgrounds to ours so plan making  
55:25
reg 18 style we had an adopted local plan back  in march 2020 still very proud of that um but  
55:32
our members looking for growth so we  had the opportunity to look at some   non-statutory growth plans um some  ways of looking at how a settlement  
55:40
could have a bit of a growth by a bit like a  large master that planning brief type thing   
55:47
over the years we've done all those steps about  digitizing our plan making trying to streamline  
55:52
the kind of submissions make it possible for  people to put their online their own comments in   online and save us this kind of time and faffing  that Anthony talked about but we wanted to  
56:03
kind of get better engagement because plan making  i think as you just said there is it's really  
56:10
quite a complicated thing but most people are  used to looking at plan applications going i don't   like that or i don't mind it plan making you try  and involve them in that kind of in the process  
56:20
so they understand how you get to the end so we also knew that anecdotally that our  
56:27
younger folks don't get involved and so we wanted  to try okay how do we make plan making a bit   more fun i think bridget that was what we talked  about right at the get-go yeah the dc officers  
56:37
amongst you may go what but that's actually  that's kind of try and get people involved have   that conversation with them help them understand  it so we did the procurement through pop tech  
56:47
we secured the future fox who have been  brilliant for us um that would be brilliant  
56:52
for you too so it's um but we've purposely  against with regulating stripped it back to  
57:01
almost like emojis really which is uh make awesome  eyes to roll but trying to kind of make it remove  
57:07
those barriers for getting engagement particularly  from younger people and so with the social media  
57:12
campaign we you know bombarded everyone in one of  our towns um to the point of uh submission and  
57:20
got a good deal of engagement back through that  so i think we're quite pleased with the level   of responses we got for just one place and also  on a very you know what is it like to live and  
57:30
work in your in your town and we now we've got  them now we've got them that dialogue open we  
57:38
with this exam successful bid for round two  looking at um a much more kind of master  
57:44
planning style where we can engage people  in some of those the kind of thoughts and  
57:50
how you build a site together with the sneaky  bit underneath of the trade-offs between  
57:55
housing will generate you income and  infrastructure will you know it will cost   you something so that's why developments look like  they do that's why us as planning professionals  
58:07
make them and that's why they turn out the way  they do um so that's we're trying we've got  
58:12
all what we're doing at the minute so in terms  of reflections um i mean i'd definitely argue  
58:18
evolution rather than revolution um in terms of  government kind of direction um the plain white  
58:24
paper terrified me a little bit because it said  protect's coming along i had no idea what it was  
58:29
and we just got an adopted local plan so you  know we mean we've got to start again and confuse  
58:36
everybody and spend loads more money on it and  so definitely evolution rather than revolution   let's not throw out all those good plans um  and it's yeah it's about resources the sector  
58:45
screams we need more resources you see now  you can streamline we've done a bit of that  
58:50
it does take a lot of time though to set  these things up as Anthony kind of alluded to   um but we're taking lessons like qr codes  on letters you know those kind of things  
59:01
it's obvious there's so many little things we  can do to tweak what our processes are  
59:07
so we can deliver better practice i've got a few  more bits but i'm pretty sure that's way over   my it's okay i've got i've got Jessica  here with the tranquility we'll come back  
59:16
to i think that piece on evolution is really  interesting but i will go to Louisa and Chris  
59:22
uh from the team at Hounslow if you want to give us  a brief introduction as well that would be great  
59:27
thanks Bridget yeah my name is Louisa i'm  principal urban design project officer at Hounslow uh working on project managing Hounslow digital  projects um i'll hand over to my colleague Chris  
59:37
to introduce and tell you about our kind  of project sure i'm Chris i'm senior policy  
59:43
officer in the spatial planning team at Hounslow  i also work alongside Louisa in um furthering the  
59:49
digital projects that we've got so this specific  bid this was to build what we've called the local  
59:56
plan maker tool and the aim of the tool  was to make a more digitized user-friendly  
1:00:02
system for consulting on our planning documents  but also again similarly to southampton to reach  
1:00:08
hard-to-reach groups such as young people  and people from black and minority ethnic   communities um just a quick background Hounslow  we're in out of west london stretching from  
1:00:19
Chiswick in the east to Heathrow in the west so  that's kind of an idea of our geography as well in terms of the document that we actually  use to the platform to consult on um it was a character and design code study so we use this  instead of the reg 19 plan because we've already  
1:00:36
kind of reached submission stage in our plan  making so that's why we used this document as well   because it had some parallels with with that   local planned document and in terms of the future  
1:00:46
we intend to branch it out to develop the tool  further and branch out to local plan documents  
1:00:51
and other planning documents as well through  the consultation we built a platform that was  
1:00:56
map-based and also had user journeys down the side  to help encourage participation we incorporated  
1:01:03
multiple ways to respond to the consultation so  there was emojis for example people could also  
1:01:09
submit either photos or videos in response to the  consultation or submit a general comment as well  
1:01:15
so there was options there and a key part another  key aim was to really just consolidate information  
1:01:21
that was important to people rather than having  to wade through reams of pages in pdf documents  
1:01:28
so the platform was area based people could  select their area of the borough there's  
1:01:35
six areas identified through the study and then  there's neighbourhoods within that so people could   select that information and as we develop the  tool further we intend for a postcode search to be  
1:01:44
added so people can just simply type their  postcode and go straight to the area and see   the information for that at the click of  a few buttons that would also be how we'd  
1:01:52
intend to branch it out through the local plan  documents we'll consult on in the future as well   we undertook this work we went through a  procurement process and we procured urban  
1:02:01
intelligence who we've been working with to  develop the tool and we'll continue to work  
1:02:07
with urban intelligence to further develop the  tool into the future to make those further   additions that i've been talking about and that  also includes further updates and enhancements  
1:02:17
to the graphics of the design of the map to kind  of make it more seamless use a story and to  
1:02:23
include additional features as well so that it's  translatable to those other planning documents  
1:02:28
when when i hand back to Louisa in a bit Louisa  is going to talk more about the information and   of the results of the consultation and kind of the targeted groups and things like that so thanks  
1:02:40
thanks yeah so through the kind of project  we learned that sort of representing things   digitally and then that very local  way is really important for people  
1:02:48
so by looking at kind of their very local area  they could see the design codes for their you know   very small neighborhoods such as the height  and density for those areas and materials and  
1:02:56
the particular sort of vision and that's  what what's really relevant to people and   helps them get that information very  quickly and in a very visual way  
1:03:05
so when people did use the platform to comment  on their codes in their local area their responses   were quite focused on the information in that  neighborhood as opposed to the kind of responses  
1:03:14
that came in through email which were kind of  your more traditional responses sort of looking   at things that might not be under our control such  as you know low traffic neighborhoods for example  
1:03:23
so yeah this project is something that we  want to take forward in our future planning   projects as well so our local plans our heritage  plans our infrastructure plans and make them  
1:03:31
much more visual and then that hyper local focus  as well inviting people's particular neighborhoods  
1:03:36
so you can just click on an infrastructure tab and  see at a glance what's coming forward in that area   and that will help to get the message  across about that planning is supported  
1:03:44
by infrastructure and this is when it will come  forward and this is what we're planning to have   I think we do need to work a little bit  harder to reach those kind of hard to reach  
1:03:52
groups but we're working on this through kind  of better graphics on the platform to try and   make the maps more understandable and to kind  of non-planners and much more user-friendly as  
1:04:01
well and generally trying to overhaul the  kind of user friendliness of the platform  
1:04:06
and kind of at Hounslow we're a very sort of  digitally focused team so we've already worked   with open intelligence um to create that site  identification an assessment portal that you  
1:04:15
saw earlier and chesterfield sort of have built  upon in such an amazing way and already with  
1:04:20
view city as well to create that and to create a  site uh capacity calculator so we're working to  
1:04:26
kind of look at all of our planning processes and  work out how we can make them much more efficient   yeah so just do some final reflections on  what we've heard just absolutely blown away  
1:04:35
by the the great success of the chesterfield  site tool and submission tool that kind of  
1:04:41
massively increase the amount of sites  submitted by the public as opposed to that   you know and site submitted through that  digital portal as opposed to the kind of pdf  
1:04:49
submission that was an absolutely brilliant  addition to the basic placemaker platform  
1:04:55
and also absolutely blown away again  by watford and and the way that they   kind of displayed their major projects as well  and really included information that people  
1:05:03
wanted to see at a glance it just really helps  to simplify a very complicated planning system  
1:05:08
and giving people that range of options as well  to find an application on different maps and   using it to view the documents and the view city  model and the site you know the site notice was  
1:05:18
was beautiful and really super engaging and with  that qr code just yeah really brilliant project
1:05:26
thank you so much louisa and chris and i think  we're all blown away as well it's just so great   to see all these all these ambitions and  and platforms uh come to life today and and  
1:05:35
to have shared that with you all over the  course of the last nine months for round one i think there's a really interesting sort  of emerge recurring focus here around engaging those hard-to-reach groups and i wanted to spend  a few moments on that in this discussion um Helen  
1:05:48
i might go to you and then and then Chris on this  sort of any reflections or lessons learned working  
1:05:54
with digital platforms but also a wider engagement  strategy on on what does work what hasn't worked  
1:05:59
and what you're looking to test um given that  you're both involved in in the second round of the   prop tech engagement fund how long i'll start with  you and then if you want to pass to Chris like  
1:06:09
you mean that'll be great no problem yeah as i  quickly said that particularly children and young  
1:06:14
people we we've kind of learned that they're not  a self-serve audience and i'm now working closely  
1:06:20
with our youth engagement officers um to see how  we can take some of that digital content into more  
1:06:27
formal settings whether that be in schools or with  youth groups so that they're with their kind of um  
1:06:32
friends and they're doing it together and having  that discussion together because independently sat   looking at your tool it could be really fun to do  but it's they're unlikely to do it on their own so  
1:06:42
it's still using the tools but using it in a  group setting with black minority ethnic groups  
1:06:51
we have had feedback that language can be a  particular barrier so the digital tool can help  
1:06:58
with translation but again with some technical  language that can be lost so it's really about  
1:07:04
stripping out words wherever possible i think  what we've also found is that whilst we did a lot  
1:07:10
of paid advertising on our social media as well as  pushing out through our own social media channels  
1:07:16
it's still the council and people don't want  to engage with the council but we know that  
1:07:22
communities have their own local social media  groups and so what we're working on at the moment   is doing is trying to tap into via kind of  all the networks that we have within our council  
1:07:34
into that kind of those those networks on the  ground so um for example tomorrow i'm going to  
1:07:40
a conference with our housing tenants where i  can go and ask them how do you want us to speak   to you how do you want us to do this and and what  what communication channels shall we use and what  
1:07:51
what little facebook groups have you got that  people will look at because they're from trusted   sources within your communities rather from us so  um yeah certainly still involving the digital but  
1:08:02
as i say it it doesn't suit all and we need these  other layers of stuff to add onto it to improve  
1:08:09
that Chris i'll let you add to that sure thank you  thanks Alan and so yeah we we as a council we've  
1:08:16
got twitter we've got Instagram we used to have  Facebook to kind of communicate but then everyone   slagged us off on it and we decided corporately  to ditch it um because we didn't like what they're  
1:08:26
saying presumably so it's gonna be one of  those things that's kind of it's another tool  
1:08:31
it's not gonna be the only tool it's not gonna  replace things i mean we've used with the   future fox a their specialist partner the  quick fox who do a lot of social media campaigns  
1:08:42
and this is you know really eye-opening stuff  for us because like you know i've tweeted before   but you know running a campaign is quite a  different thing um so what we've essentially found  
1:08:53
we've done two or going up for the second stage  consultation now which is a lot more complicated   around the subject matter and the amount of time  potentially someone might need to take to fill  
1:09:03
in the form or to play our interactive uh tool  and the you know the expertise says you'll get  
1:09:12
a massive drop off and it's like well why is that  is more complicated it's going to take more time  
1:09:18
people on their phones this way of reaching  them clearly but the more complicated you put  
1:09:24
stuff to them the more likely they are to scroll  past for something much more kind of endorphin  
1:09:29
inducing so it's it's a you know as a real open  ender kind of you know bluntly you're going to  
1:09:35
get about 60 responses this way and then  you go well in some ways i'll settle for that  
1:09:41
because this is something quite new so yeah i kind  of i think social media campaign there's lessons  
1:09:47
in there about um just sounds like consultation  we would normally do comms at the beginning  
1:09:52
comes at the end and be busy dealing with it  during and servicing the consultation exercise  
1:09:59
through the kind of again through the future fox  and quick fox they're saying well actually you do   you need to post stuff pretty much at least a week  only each week time to keep it fresh and if you  
1:10:09
go yeah that's kind of obvious isn't it it's one  of those obvious lessons that you know evolution  
1:10:14
kind of to our practice so i think when we do  consultation exercises for local plan reg 18 19  
1:10:21
stages that's what we'll do we'll build that into  our statement of community involvement and our   practice and process because it just it's obvious  but until you actually learn a bit and then try it  
1:10:32
it you kind of think well you know it's just not  an idea that comes across a bit other qr codes on  site notices and all our exhibitions and  letters it's just you know why would we not  
1:10:43
think about earlier and that was the privilege of  being in this you know group kind of where we've   actually seen what is best practice and we're  all pushing the boundaries of it aren't we so  
1:10:52
seeing what can be done to improve our processes  so yeah so that's enough for me again i think  
1:10:59
no that's brilliant Chris and thank you  for sharing can i just come back on your   piece around working with you you did a really  interesting piece where you had um it was Rhys  
1:11:07
wasn't it from your local local community on on  that social media you just want to share that just   that that piece the audience think they'd be quite  interested in that approach and i can i'll try and  
1:11:17
describe it rather than do the tech side of  things yeah um crop tech exercise so so yes we  
1:11:25
we've kind of well the feedback again from our  from the quick fox and the future fox is that you   know if the accounts will come out going we want  to get you involved even with our counsellors you  
1:11:34
know who's often what we do on our own tv channel  type thing there people will go boring it's the  
1:11:40
council and so their advice was find someone who  is essentially um relatable to the younger people  
1:11:47
who you're aiming for and then they're more likely  to engage and click on it and fill it in so we  
1:11:53
purposely you know looked under behind the sofa  and the cushions trying to find somebody local  
1:11:59
and through a community group like a so like a  youth group essentially in um our town shy brook  
1:12:07
they found somebody who has kind of come out of  their youth group gone off to university which   is actually quite unusual in some ways for  shy book but clearly aspirational too and  
1:12:18
actually have them say you know this isn't just  a boring council you know consultation they want   to know you know what you think get involved in  creating your future which was kind of our tagline  
1:12:28
and that definitely saw an uplift in the  responses so we kind of essentially changed the  
1:12:36
the mouthpiece um to try and sneak it  past people i mean that's kind of what   what it was doing and that but it did  work and it again it's those little kind of  
1:12:45
evolutionary tricks or you know practices that we  can tweak and change what we do and do better so
1:12:54
that's really helpful Chris yeah i think we're  all we're looking to know what those tricks are   and share them across both inside the pop check  fund and outside of it as well um in the last few  
1:13:03
minutes Louisa and Christopher kirk i'd love to  come back to you on that piece around evolution   because i think uh you and the team are doing some  amazing work to really push that agenda forward of  
1:13:12
digitizing wider planning particularly when  it comes to gis and spatial data what do you   think is next where do we go from here as a as an  industry and that's a big question but i i know  
1:13:23
you're both really passionate about the subject  so love to hear thoughts on on how we can work   together to take this forward uh and keep pushing  the boundaries of how we can engage communities  
1:13:33
with planning i think it's about having a range  of tools so it's about having what we call at  
1:13:39
Hounslow digital toolkit so that everything  becomes more integrated finally so we've got  
1:13:45
our consultation software that's digital  now we've got our automated hello process  
1:13:50
we're seeking to integrate those two together  because there's a crossover because the   sites the brownfield land register sites the site  allocations all can form part of a consultation in  
1:14:00
the local plan consultation software and we've  recently done a piece on how a site was identified  
1:14:06
using the call for sites tool which is built  into the schla software or the Hounslow assessment  
1:14:12
database and then that was subsequently worked  up in a capacity tool that we're developing the  
1:14:19
Hounslow intensification tool which allows  3d modelling and to look at a site and   see views testing and really get a density by  design type capacity and then finally take it  
1:14:30
through to the consultation tool so i think  it's about having almost a single kind of  
1:14:37
range of tools that combine as one and then users  can have a sort of single sign-on just have be  
1:14:43
able to access them all in one place perhaps and  and from a kind of public view and use them that  
1:14:51
way so that's kind of where we're heading we're  hoping and Louisa will be able to add to that  
1:14:56
yeah absolutely i completely agree and then also  um just recognizing that as in planning we are  
1:15:02
part of the wider council and people aren't just  interested in you know what what buildings coming   forward in the area but they're interested in  what we're going to do with their green spaces and  
1:15:09
and things like that as well which pull kind  of sometimes falls out of our kind of planning   team specifically so trying to integrate  those platforms in with the wider council  
1:15:17
so like chris says they can just do single  sign-on see all of the plans for their local area   and just make that process a lot  more user-focused and user-friendly
1:15:27
brilliant Chris McKinney i'll go to you thank you  um you met me before right and so yeah one of  
1:15:35
those kind of key things about how we actually how  the government take this forward i mean i've been   mulling over that given there's loads of interest  in the room yeah we're in a privileged position  
1:15:43
because we've had a funding and access to the time  of you as officers and the best practice crowd  
1:15:51
i kind of wonder if rather than data regs like  all data guidelines data standards being prepared  
1:15:58
that kind of shoehorn processes that the councils  have to follow whether something along the lines  
1:16:04
of kpis performance indicators that would help you  know herders gradually into the prop tech sector  
1:16:13
um and potentially tying into one of the things  that came out of the planning advisory service   conference at taylor last week you know that can  maybe like a you know rather than a proptech fund  
1:16:24
three four five six where you just keep  helping certain authorities move forward  
1:16:30
using those kind of kpis to kind of say okay well  if you're looking to improve on three of these  
1:16:35
you can bid into prop tech you know uplift prod  fund something like that which rather than lose  
1:16:43
or force authorities to do this kind of encourage  them that way i mean that was say when i saw Simon  
1:16:49
in the room i thought i'm gonna say this um so  because it's in parliament at the minute so that's  
1:16:55
what i was kind of i think would be a good way  of that evolution not revolution side of things  
1:17:01
we're listening to you chris and  i'll i'll respond to uh the wider   next steps after we'll go to hell and  then we'll and then we'll uh go back  
1:17:07
to to our next session Helen i'll  go to you for any final reflections   yeah just following on from what chris said really  that currently you know having experience using  
1:17:17
a new digital platform that there's certainly  a kind of mismatch and a gap between what the  
1:17:23
digital platforms can enable us to do and what  the regs force us to do and you know we can do  
1:17:30
all this great stuff and make things look really  good but then we're still in fear of you know   how's it going to look at examination and have we  collected everybody's data correctly or you know  
1:17:39
when we ask people for their names and contact  details at reg19 does that actually put them off   from wanting to participate so you know we know  we've got to make it simple but again that plan  
1:17:50
needs to be simplified that whole process needs to  be simplified if you want to digitize it and again  
1:17:55
reflecting on simon's thing uh comments earlier  yes there has been massive digital transformation  
1:18:01
but it's in transactional things this isn't you  know plan making isn't transactional it's very   complex and we need to change the plan before  we can really fly with the digital i believe
1:18:15
well then i can i completely agree and i think  that's why it's just it's so amazing to have so   many people here today to validate that need  to change and and that and to validate the  
1:18:24
requirement to change together and as you say  chris to you know evolve our approach to using  
1:18:30
digital alongside that that wider planning and  policy lens um thank you so much everyone we could  
1:18:35
talk all day and i'm sure um you know there's  many more questions and we'll try to come back   to some of the audience as a follow-up to today's  event but i'd just like everyone to do a round of  
1:18:45
applause digitally for our panel and to again say  thank you to Christopher McKinney Christopher Kirk  
1:18:51
Louisa Facchino-Stack and Helen Owens for our panel  and for being such brilliant champions of the   program alongside everyone else involved in round  one of the prop tech fund and with that i'm going  
1:19:02
to go to our final speaker today before we share  any last reflections Chris Standish it's  
1:19:08
been brilliant having you work alongside us with  your lens of of Homes England i love to pass  
1:19:14
the microphone to you for a few minutes and share  any reflections you have on your wider program   and how this hopefully aligns and you know we can  keep building out the agenda and momentum together  
1:19:26
well first of all thank you very much for uh  letting me have a slot in Homes England have   a slot i do appreciate it and um i think Steven  leadership money's tight and you're still able  
1:19:38
to create some space for all this so on behalf  of i think of everybody else that's taking place  
1:19:43
in the pilots you know a big round of applause  to that leadership in that dynamic space that  
1:19:48
is government and funding and all that stuff  so well done to you Bridget and to jess and to   the rest of your team and Stephen for being your  sponsor on all that so genuinely appreciate that  
1:19:58
i share it to my colleagues here who are very  good at this stuff which is Jack Curran so  
1:20:04
you know find them on LinkedIn and Victoria Lisam  you know they're very much finger on the pulse on  
1:20:09
this sort of stuff in terms of Homes England  but it seems to me um that the learning from this  
1:20:16
is is tremendous but if we think about some of the  outcomes what we're trying to achieve and i guess  
1:20:21
you know one of the big things that seems to  be a a bit of a challenge for planning and  
1:20:27
development and regeneration is around outcomes  and around trust you know how can we look to use  
1:20:33
this as a tool to build trust and you've seen  some great um pathways into the beginnings  
1:20:40
of building some trust and the beginnings of  building greater inclusion in planning which is  
1:20:46
terrific absolutely fantastic so there's three  sort of questions really which come to my mind  
1:20:53
and none of them are overly intelligent as  you'd expect from me but you know i wonder how  
1:21:00
this this contributes to the the broader solution  of empowering people in communities to genuinely  
1:21:06
take part in the planning process to improve  their places and communities you know with  
1:21:12
respect to taking part having a better say more  say more opportunity to have a say in some of  
1:21:17
these things is great but where can they really  take that extra step and genuinely feel really  
1:21:24
really empowered through this digital planning  work to genuinely make a genuine difference to   their places in their communities because really  that's where we need to get to i would suggest  
1:21:34
and then the second thing is is an internal  facing one a challenge to ourselves and you  
1:21:39
all the people on the call is what can what do  you hope what do you hope Homes England can do  
1:21:45
with some of this learning how can you support us  to work together so that we can use some of the  
1:21:51
tools and techniques that you've been learning  and developing with your partners your digital   partners to try and make what we do better  and more accountable and more inclusive on  
1:22:00
the projects and the programs that we're involved  in we would really appreciate any thoughts and any   feedback that you have on that to help us all  to make what we do better and more inclusive  
1:22:11
and then finally which is the easy one Bridget  because you've got all the answers to this    you know it's about the sort of mainstreaming bit  so the lessons learned the community of practice  
1:22:21
which Stephen talked about before how can we all  keep this going beyond the funding running out  
1:22:27
so let's try and share that opportunity and that  challenge together if we possibly can through   linking up joining up and really trying to support  each other to overcome some of the lumps and bumps  
1:22:38
associated with this so thanks for letting  me say that and you've got all the solutions  
1:22:43
Bridget i can tell the smile says it all  well thank you so much Chris no i think  
1:22:49
it's this is a this is a team effort and it's  an industry effort and i'll come to that in   a moment with final reflections but i appreciate  you joining today and also just it's been great to  
1:22:59
connect with you and the wider homes England  team and jack and Victoria and everyone else   and and just keep sharing and learning because you  know we really are at the start of this journey  
1:23:07
so thanks again and uh we'll we'll bring you in  for other conversations as well now you've done   such a great plug of our program much appreciated  so in our final few minutes it's been a huge  
1:23:18
session this morning and i think we're at over  100 questions from our audience between the  
1:23:24
the menti and the team's chat and there's  there is so much to follow up on and respond  
1:23:29
to i think just to come back to a few of the  wider questions of where do we go from here   and how do we keep building on the momentum Dan i  saw your question and tagged me in that as well  
1:23:39
just wanted to share a few of the wider next steps  that that we're working on as a team and we'd love  
1:23:44
your support on delivering um the the next is  uh we are wrapping up round one and this is you  
1:23:50
know us drawing a line of the scent of the amazing  work that's been done with the local authorities   and prop tech uh companies involved in round  one um but we are working on round two and some  
1:23:59
of you may have seen comms about that we'll be  sharing more across our channels over the coming   months and we just want to acknowledge the amazing  amount of work that's also going into that program  
1:24:08
working with 37 authorities over 28 projects some  of you which are here today it's great to see some  
1:24:14
familiar names and so we'll be doing another  range of events in a few months time as we  
1:24:19
keep sharing those learnings of those projects  out across our wider community of practice so  
1:24:24
round two is happening and we'd love you to see  you there at those events as they as they occur   and also as as Chris McKinney mentioned you  know there is a wider piece here around where  
1:24:33
the policy comes into play and certainly that's  part of the digital planning agenda of creating  
1:24:39
those digital powers within the levelling up and  regeneration build that will enable a more open  
1:24:45
and more transparent planning led and planning  data market for us all to hopefully tap into  
1:24:51
as a collective industry and so i just want to  acknowledge the work that's being done in that   space and hopefully we'll will um will create  an amazing ripple effect for us all to have  
1:25:00
to have that more open and transparent approach  to how we use it in a community engagement   process but also in terms of local plan making   and other policy as well and finally uh in terms  
1:25:11
of the renewed focus on community engagement  that was acknowledged in the levelling up and   regeneration bill um as a as a wider policy  team we are laser focused on building out that  
1:25:21
community engagement guidance there's been some  really interesting suggestions from the audience   today and what that looks like in terms of minimum  standards kpi performance you know we are we are  
1:25:31
putting our heads together on what that looks like  and we would love to engage with all of you and   your teams in in building out that guidance and  and making sure that it's really fit for purpose  
1:25:41
and can add value and build on the amazing amount  of work that's been done over many years in this  
1:25:46
space and hopefully enabled um with technology  as well um and finally in the last minute i  
1:25:52
just want to acknowledge the team behind making  today's event happen um Lou Chesca Charli on our  
1:25:58
side you know these digital engagement events  with 500 plus people uh don't just appear and so  
1:26:04
just wanted to acknowledge all of the work in  terms of logistics and event planning and making  
1:26:09
today's event happen i think relatively smoothly  considering we are literally pushing the   boundaries of ms teams and also the wider team um  Jess Williamson you know without you championing  
1:26:20
this work 18 months ago two years ago and lifting  the charge Milan Lawrence May-N Rishi Ali Eloise
1:26:27
Bethany Shawn Jen there are so many people in the  wider team some who you haven't heard from today  
1:26:33
but i want to assure the audience there is a  team here and we are committed to this mission   we are committed to turning this vision into  reality and that's where it comes into my  
1:26:41
final reflection for us which is around everyone  here today because we have a team on our side it's  
1:26:46
been great to hear from the team some of the  teams today but this is a collective mission   for us all across the industry to work together to  take the future forward to build on the dialogue  
1:26:57
and create a planning system and a housing market  that is more transparent that is more accessible  
1:27:03
and that is enabled by the amazing benefits that  prop tech has to offer and so i encourage you all  
1:27:09
to stay curious around the role that proptech has  to play in your day jobs and across your teams to  
1:27:15
share the learnings that you've heard today with  your wider colleagues across your networks and to   keep thinking about how we can use technology  as people in planning and a variety of roles  
1:27:25
to create that more transparent and equitable  and inclusive housing market and planning   system thank you all for your time i'm going to  give us an extra minute to catch our breath and  
1:27:35
hopefully cool down with a cup of tea um we'll  be sharing a follow-up um survey for everyone  
1:27:40
involved including the recording to today's event  and the slides and i just want to say thanks again   for our amazing speakers for taking the time to  share their projects with us and thank you all  
1:27:50
for your time this morning have a great day and  we look forward to seeing you at future events