Masterplanning

we ensure that masterplans ask for and get more social value

The Need: If you are producing a Masterplan for a particular area, you can ask for and get more social value by engaging with communities in more effective ways. Successful engagement will not only ensures that community needs and aspirations influence decisions but that the engagement process itself facilitates the development of inclusive, empowered and cohesive communities. 

Your masterplan will facilitate social value when:

1. Communities know how they can get involved in the masterplanning of their area.
2. Masterplanning teams build on previous consultation exercises that have taken place in an area.
3. Communities have access to the relevant professionals and council officers throughout a masterplanning process.
4. Masterplans successfully collect and analyse community views and ensure that community needs and aspirations inform the final masterplan.
5. Masterplanning teams make sure that they meet wider objectives around equality, cohesion and empowerment – in particular, when teams make sure that they identify and engage with hard-to-reach groups.
6. Masterplanning teams leave a legacy and look to build the capacity and confidence of communities so that communities members continue to influence development in the future.

Our Response: We support you to develop masterplans that ask for more social value.

We do this by:

1. Developing a Communications Plan: We develop a Communications Plan to help communities to understand the purpose of the masterplan, the information they should expect to see in a masterplan, the approach to community engagement, the aims of the consultation activity and the different types of engagement activity proposed.
2. Carrying out engagement activities: We carry out appropriate community engagement activity which builds on existing engagement work to date, identifies target groups and hard-to-reach groups within the community and existing barriers to their involvement, complements existing consultation frameworks and initiatives and ensures that all sections of the community are targeted. Engagement activities include workshops, questionnaires, one-to-one interviews and neighbourhood walk-abouts. In addition to this, we are constantly looking to refresh our community engagement methods for example we are now using digital technologies (including video) in our engagement processes.
3. Analysing consultation findings: We analyse the findings of the consultation and engagement activity and make a series of recommendations about how the findings can be incorporated into the final masterplan.
4. Supporting the drafting of the masterplan: We support the drafting of the final masterplan so that it reflects community needs and aspirations and so that it refers to a range of community benefit proposals that developers could choose to incorporate.

The Benefits: Our role in the masterplanning process focuses on ensuring real and meaningful community participation and involvement in the process. This work ensures that the masterplan reflects local needs and aspirations for the area and that it makes recommendations about how stakeholder and community aspirations and needs should be kept alive throughout the development process. Our community engagement activity on masterplans has brought multiple benefits for local communities (have a look at our case studies for further information). By ensuring that masterplans are informed by real and meaningful community participation, our work leads to masterplans that encourage development that is in-keeping with community aspirations and leads to wider social, economic and environmental benefits for the area.


Case study

Independent Community Advisor on Masterplanning in Sandwell




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