
Affordable housing consultation with Coastline Housing

- Company: GOCOLLABORATE LIMITED
- Client: Coastline Housing Limited
- Year: 2022
- Region: UK-wide
- Product: HOUSING DEVELOPMENT
- Community engagement
- Geographical information systems (GIS) and mapping
- Plan-making, planning application and data management systems
Introduction
In Cornwall and in many other areas this has resulted in local people, and in particular young people, being unable to find an affordable place to live close to their families or their places of work.
With this backdrop we have been partnering with Coastline Housing Limited a leading housing association in Cornwall to help them inform and engage the communities where they are looking to build.
Challenges
To gain planning permission for these projects it is vital to make sure that local communities are consulted and understand what is being proposed. This is particularly the case given the scope for communities to misunderstand proposals and underlying needs and the difficulties that this can cause.
Coastline were also very keen to get local knowledge about sites and needs.
Solutions
Following the successful build, we supported the Coastline team as they used the platform to complete reserved matters applications and as part of pre-app submissions consultations.
The platform enabled Coastline to focus on issues previously raised by the parish council and members of the public as the starting point, with information being presented in five themes : Scheme Design, Roads and Parking, Environment, Utilities and Drainage and Eligibility for the homes.
By visiting and registering on a dedicated website, that could also be accessed via a QR code, communities are able to view plans, documents and ask questions about the scheme.
Results
Using the dedicated GoCollaborate platforms, details of the draft designs and information about the proposal were provided to the local community.
By the end of the four-week consultation period, 86 people had registered on the two platforms. The parallel Facebook campaign to inform residents about the consultations reached 3,565 people, resulting in 187 different visitors to the platform and 45 comments.
A further consultation for a scheme at Connor Downs saw 1145 people reached and 229 platform visits and 30 comments.
We have been working with the GoCollaborate team to develop a platform which helps us extend our public engagement. We’re really pleased with the results and how the platform will helps us to inform and take into account views and opinions as we go through the design and planning process.
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