Greater Cambridge Shared Planning win funding for digital engagement pilot

The Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service has won funding from the Department of Levelling Up, Homes and Communities to trial out new and innovative ways to widen public engagement with the help of digital tools.

Our pilot project would look to use digital technology to capture public comments and sentiments on planning matters, specifically those that fall outside of the formal consultation process. These are comments ‘in the wild’, i.e., social media, blog posts or articles, that could provide us with useful insights but don’t get picked up in the formal consultation processes. We will announce more details when we have procured our technology partner for the pilot, and will start to test new approaches in 2022.

Our team already use digital technology and social media extensively to gather insight and feedback on policies, with over 300,000 views of our video content online at the last Local Plan consultation, and thousands of engagements. This pilot will build on this to capture more comment, more easily, using innovative digital tools. Further information about DLUHC’s PropTech Engagement Fund, which has awarded GCSP this funding, can be found at their news release.