Sustain Magazine Awards 2011

PlanningConsultation, a web-based public consultation tool created by Chelgate, has been shortlisted in the communications category of the 2011 Sustain Magazine Awards.

Established over 21 years ago, Chelgate is a public relations and public affairs consultancy with an outstanding track record in planning communications, stakeholder engagement and community consultation. It developed PlanningConsultation (www.planningconsultation.com) almost eight years ago to assist it in addressing two key issues in planning communications: providing a clear and unequivocal source of information for the community, and providing an interface for the community, encouraging as many local people and stakeholders to participate in consultations as possible.

Michael Hardware, Chelgate executive vice-president, said: “The consultation tool is used in conjunction with the usual communications channels and platform associated with planning communications, but provides the focus for information dissemination and community engagement.

“It harnesses the latent power of the normally silent majority, by encouraging participation in private and has shown thereby more balanced views towards development proposals.”

Although Chelgate was one of the very early adopters of the internet for community consultation and engagement purposes, it is recognised now by the industry as being one of the best channels for this purpose. Crucial now is what to do with the information gleaned from the community.

Michael Hardware continued: “PlanningConsultation has a useful back-end service which assimilates the information provided by the community using key words, and then measures, models and maps them on Google Maps.

“This can be made public or reserved just for the development team, but it enables the information to be viewed in a variety of ways, tracking both chronologically and geographically the issues that have been raised by the community.”

Chelgate will find out whether it has won the award at the awards dinner next Tuesday, March 1, at The Troxy, Commercial Road, London.

Click here to view Chelgate's community consultatation page (opens a new browser).