Strategic Planning Case Study - South West Hertfordshire

The Challenge

• The majority of people are disengaged in long term, strategic planning
• There is confusion around the process 
• A minority voice can dominate the process

 The Opportunity

• Engage early, on a non-statutory basis and involve those who would not ordinarily be involved in long term planning, including young people
• Make the process relevant, interesting and accessible
• Ensure a wider group of people become involved on an ongoing basis

The Result of Early Engagement in SW Hertfordshire

• Over 10,100 visits to the webpage
• Over 3,200 polls completed
• Over 14,000 individual free text comments
• Over 600 individuals provided contact details to be involved on an ongoing basis
• Even spread of ages of respondents, from under 25’s to over 65’s
• Clear emerging consensus on community priorities
• Reach and quality of feedback surpassed officer and member expectations

Lessons Learnt  

• Early engagement is a pivotal part of a long term plan’s evolution.
• Engagement should be deployed before decisions on issues such as growth options have been published, even in draft format
• An engagement strategy in place from the outset, with clear direction and messaging can ensure a more productive and positive working process, generating interest and avoiding confusion
• Directing the conversation away from solely planning (and planning acronyms, references etc), focussing on the benefits joint or long term planning can bring, focussing on the multitude of issues that will be covered, encourages greater interaction
• Consistency in messaging and approach is key
• Visually stimulating, high impact advertising material appeals to a wider audience
• Digital engagement can be a powerful tool in engaging a silent majority of people

‘’ The advantages of engaging early, on a non-statutory basis, and prior to the results of any significant technical work, has enabled the six authorities to truly think strategically and long term across South West Hertfordshire about what the community priorities for a statutory Joint Strategic Plan should be. A key aim of the engagement was to move the conversation towards issues that are relevant to local people, and to reach a younger audience; the innovative and easily accessible material and digital tools created allowed this to happen.’’ 

Chris Outtersides, South West Hertfordshire Joint Strategic Plan Director.

Experience from elsewhere has highlighted the importance for Local Authorities to adopt an early and transparent communication and engagement process with regard to strategic planning.

Developing a strategic plan is a long-term process, one that has to work alongside the development of the constituent Local Authorities’ own Local Plan process which inevitably are at varying stages, with conflicting priorities.

Without such an approach there can be confusion amongst the community and stakeholders alike, resulting in a feeling of distrust, resulting in low participation. This can exacerbated amongst young people, despite them having the potential to be the most impacted by the process and decision making.

Iceni Projects supported South West Hertfordshire in delivering a Communications Plan and Engagement Strategy across the five local authorities and one county council, and externally to residents and stakeholders. The aim was to effectively communicate the development of a Joint Strategic Plan (JSP) and widen community participation in the process, particularly amongst young people.

Having undertaken the first stage of the engagement work we are now in a position to report on key lessons learnt as part of this case study.

Whilst the focus of the work in this instance was to support a JSP process, the findings are applicable to any form of long-term planning in an area.

The initial development work was funded by the Planning Advisory Service (PAS). The subsequent live engagement was funded by five local authorities and one county council.

The five local planning authorities within South West Hertfordshire (Dacorum Borough Council, Hertsmere Borough Council, St Albans City and District Council, Three Rivers Borough Council and Watford Borough Council) are working in collaboration with Hertfordshire County Council to develop a Joint Strategic Plan (JSP), with the intention to proactively plan for the region’s growth up to and beyond 2050.

The intention is for the JSP to be a formal statutory Development Plan Document, providing the overarching strategic planning framework for the five Local Planning Authority areas between 2035 and 2050.

The JSP forms one critical workstream of a wider collaboration between the local authorities on a number of areas that lie outside of planning and development.

The JSP team, led by Chris Outtersides, South West Hertfordshire Joint Strategic Plan Director, included planning and communication officers from the Councils. The Strategic Planning Members Group, responsible for overseeing the development of the JSP programme, were involved in the development of material.

The work recognised the importance of ensuring that the JSP was not developed in isolation and that in order to help smooth the path of its development, ultimately allowing it to be a successfully adopted planning document, engagement with the wider community and stakeholders should form a pivotal and early part of the plan’s evolution.

The South West Herts JSP was at a relatively early stage and there was therefore a real opportunity to be on the front foot in terms of engagement. It was recognised that the opportunity to engage prior to any decisions made on possible growth options should not be missed. By ensuring that there was an engagement strategy in place from the outset, with clear direction and messaging developed for the JSP project, whatever its final shape or format, lessons learnt from elsewhere told us it would be a more productive and positive joint working process.

With key stages of the JSP programmed and external technical work due to commence it was important to commence as early as possible in 2020, not only to ensure the opportunity was not lost but to feed qualitatively into the technical work where possible, create much needed understanding and start to generate trust and interest. 

Iceni Projects provided a combination of creative and technical skills to support South West Hertfordshire from outset of the process, including:

• developing a clear, concise communication plan and engagement strategy;
• developing a brand and identity for the programme that became easily recognisable; and
• working effectively with the group to undertake an initial period of community engagement.

In addition, a media protocol was prepared to discuss a series of options for the local authorities to work together to manage the media elements of the engagement strategy. 

Developing a JSP is a long-term process, and one that is not necessarily easily understood by those who do not work within the built environment sector. Based on previous experience, there tends to be questions around the need for a JSP, when each local authority is developing their own Local Plan, and possible misunderstanding over how one relates to the other. The scale of a JSP, both in terms of time and physical strategic growth, is not easily comprehended as residents and elected members understandably focus on the short-term and immediate view.

The potential for miscomprehension around a JSP is high. It is important therefore that any engagement programme for a JSP supports the internal communications process, to ensure officers and members equipped with the right information, to answer questions accurately and promote the benefits of the JSP and public involvement in the process.

Where JSP’s are currently being developed elsewhere in the country it is possible to identify areas where lessons could be learned in terms of how to effectively communicate the JSP and undertake engagement, particularly in relation to bringing the wider community through the process. There have been examples where a lack of effective communication has led to cynicism and opposition from the public, resulting in a feeling of distrust and ultimately resulting in low participation.

The purpose of a JSP is to bring together neighbouring authorities to create a joined-up strategic vision for the area’s growth. Whilst there are obvious advantages to such an approach it does also bring with it challenges. The grouping of local authorities in some cases creates artificial geographical areas, with a new boundary and assumes that there is an understanding of a homogenous identity for this grouping. Therefore, one of the first tasks for any JSP related engagement exercise is to create an identity, and one that is agreeable to all local authorities involved.

Based on the background, opportunities and challenges set out above, the objectives of the initial, focused stage of engagement within SW Hertfordshire were to:

• Start to build awareness, understanding and generate interest in the process, resulting in greater participation downstream;
• Establish a true two-way dialogue, enabling all stakeholders (including political) to become actively involved in the development of a regional plan;
• Allow the South West Herts authorities to effectively communicate the benefits of regional planning and what benefits this could bring to the region;
• Inform the technical work that has now commenced, by providing information related to priorities, issues and opportunities; and
• Directly engage young people in the process and record their views on a series of key issues.

• Creating a distinct identity

The JSP required a distinct identity, without one local authority seeming to have precedence over another. With the wider collaboration work/ workstreams committed, the JSP engagement work needed to fit in, to develop a narrative and identity for South West Herts.

The key messages for the JSP needed to be centred around high level themes and objectives that also reflected the wider collaboration.

A strong online presence was a crucial part of developing the JSP identity and providing an external facing platform to help build trust with the community.

We considered that through the engagement process it was important to use non-technical language, directing the conversation to issues relevant to the audience and to focus on the benefits joint planning could bring to SW Herts (such as infrastructure delivery). The conversation needed to be focussed on the multitude of issues the JSP will cover, to encourage greater interaction. Indeed, the engagement did not refer to the JSP at all.

Taking such an approach at an early stage also helped with encouraging greater interaction in the process from the younger generation.

Traditionally the younger generation do not engage on issues such as planning, but they do engage on topics such as a sustainable future, improving social mobility, accessibility to education, jobs and opportunities.

The engagement framework set out innovative ways in which we could reach out to these groups in order to encourage their participation.

• Creating a toolbox of material

We created a foundation for the work, preparing a ‘toolbox of material’ and an initial suggested programme for engagement. Whilst the primary focus of the toolkit and strategy was external communication and engagement, we also developed an internal engagement strategy, providing advice on when and how to brief internally on the workstream. Key elements included:

•             Key messaging framework 

•             Joint media protocol, working with all the relevant communications teams

•             Brand / identity for the JSP

•             Website copy 

•             Outline programme for member engagement 

•             Suite of document templates to support the engagement programme

• The Engagement Strategy

The aim of the engagement was to establish a true two-way dialogue, enabling all stakeholders, including political, to actively get involved in the development of the JSP, whilst at the same time allowing the South West Herts authorities to effectively communicate the benefits of developing a JSP. The engagement also informed the technical work being undertaken.

Iceni Projects also recommended that the wider engagement strategy, undertaken over a longer time frame, involved activities such as the following:

• Focus group discussions – involving a cross section of the community, used to test the effectiveness of the engagement strategy and help evolve key messaging;
• Community workshops, including those that have cross-authority representation – these could be themed to coincide with (future) key technical studies being undertaken and with different stages of the JSP development;
• Stakeholder group forums – for example a forum with all Chamber of Commerce representatives in attendance and a forum for environmental groups, or heritage groups across all the local authorities;
• Working with Parish Councils – attending relevant meetings;
• Online engagement via dedicated website with interactive elements;
• Social media – including Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to engage those who are time pressured and to reach out to the younger generation;
• Talks and workshops in secondary schools / colleges / universities;
• Traditional consultation drop-in events;
• Promotion / information video – using Vox Pop’s from stakeholders and members of the community; and
• Promotional collateral including printed newsletters and flyers, radio and newspaper adverts, posters and email bulletins.

• The Process

In terms of the process, it was agreed that the initial stage of work would be to undertake a digital engagement exercise incorporating highly engaging videos.

The core activity was a targeted social media campaign using the animated adverts directing people to a visual online polling system. Iceni prepared the eye-catching adverts and short videos and we undertook four weeks of targeted adverts in conjunction with Built ID with the vast majority of respondents completed the poll during that period.

The social media adverts ran for 4 weeks from February to March 2020.

The questions concentrated on gaining a better understanding of key community priorities; transport, healthcare, schools, infrastructure and creating great places to live.

The campaign was supported with Member briefings held across all six authorities, Town and Parish Council briefings, as well as meetings with the local business community. At the meetings, attendees were directed to the online poll. The engagement was also promoted through newsletters, posters and handing out businesses cards with the URL and a QR code.

• The Results  

In summary:

• Over 10,100 visits to the webpage
• Over 3,200 polls completed
• Over 14,000 pieces of individual feedback
• Over 600 people have stated they would like to be involved on an ongoing basis

Outcomes: 

• Even spread of ages of respondents, from under 25’s to over 65’s
• Clear emerging consensus on community priorities
• Strong basis for ongoing engagement with over 600 people willing to be engaged during the next stages of work
• Quality of feedback capable of being used for a variety of purposes in addition to the development of a JSP
• Trust and transparency in the process
• Reach and quality of feedback surpassed officer and member expectations

• Early engagement is a pivotal part of a long term plan’s evolution.
• Engagement should be deployed before decisions on issues such as growth options have been published, even in draft format
• An engagement strategy in place from the outset, with clear direction and messaging can ensure a more productive and positive working process, generating interest and avoiding confusion
• Directing the conversation away from solely planning (and planning acronyms, references etc), focussing on the benefits joint or long term planning can bring, focussing on the multitude of issues that will be covered, encourages greater interaction
• Consistency in messaging and approach is key
• Visually stimulating, high impact advertising material appeals to a wider audience
• Digital engagement can be a powerful tool in engaging a silent majority of people