Grosvenor, First Base, Redrow, Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea Council, City of London Corporation and Barking Riverside have signed up to a new technology-enabled tool that seeks to revolutionise the broken consultation process.
The tool, Give-My-View, has been developed by Savannah de Savary’s Built-ID and aims to enable inclusive engagement by empowering communities and giving them a voice in decision-making.
Alongside interactive timelines and digestible facts about the development, the community are given the opportunity to vote on key questions and decisions for the schemes, with their input having an actionable impact on the resulting planning proposal. The tool is accessed via QR code and website and has been designed so it is useable by everyone, regardless of age and ability.
De Savary said: “Having a say on how our built environment is shaped is so important, yet many in our communities feel disenfranchised and without agency when it comes to new development. Our new tool breaks down the barriers to community engagement and enables more local people to be part of the planning process and to feel a sense of ownership in a new development in their neighbourhood.”
Barry Jessup, director at First Base, added: “Effective community engagement is integral to successful development. We are excited to be working with Built-ID to raise the quality of community consultation and stakeholder engagement to the next level, and our developments will see the benefits of this new approach.
“This visual and immersive platform reduces the barriers to community engagement, makes the process more inclusive and will help ensure our scheme is shaped by broad and diverse feedback.”
De Savary said there was clearly a breakdown in trust between developers and the community, and that the developers and local councils that had signed up to the tool admitted that they genuinely struggled to have meaningful communication with communities but did care and “genuinely want to built trust with the community” and deliver meaningful investment beyond the bricks and mortar.
To do that, the tool has “gamified” the way that developers and councils partner with local residents. Engagement by community members, irrespective of how they vote, translates into donations to local charities by the property developers.
The tool, which is implemented at the pre-planning stage, enables developers and local authorities to receive feedback from the community in real time, allowing them to process suggestions and make any changes to the development in the planning phase, which reduces delays and results in better places created through data-driven design.
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