Using social networking sites in public consultations: Trafford

In July 2008, Damien Cutting, planning officer at Trafford Borough Council, began piloting a project to use social networking sites to get young people involved in the core strategy issues and options stage consultation.

"When I started as a planner in 2006,” says Damien, “I noticed straight away that at consultation events it was always the same people turning up. That’s not to say those people’s views aren’t important, but it highlighted the fact that we weren’t engaging with different groups within our community.”

Damien decided to focus on getting the under 19s who lived in Trafford more involved in the planning process, with the objective of getting representations from them. His biggest challenge was educating young people about how they could influence the planning process.

• Setting up shop online
• Creating a (truly) non-technical summary
• Getting young people involved
• Outcomes
• Lessons learnt
• Links

Setting up shop online

His first step was to set up a group called ‘Trafford Strategic Planning’ (link at the bottom of this page) on the popular social networking site, Facebook. Using Facebook rather than putting it on the Trafford Council website meant that young people were already familiar with the format and could find the site online easily.

To make sure Trafford Council wasn’t just reaching affluent internet users in certain areas, Damien looked at the available information on internet usage in the area. In terms of digital inclusiveness, Trafford was ideal as there is a high internet usage among young people in all demographics, both in the home and at internet access points in local libraries.

Importantly, Damien was given a lot of support from his manager and executive members. He explains: “They basically told me to go off and develop it, and programmed in time for me to do so. That’s not to say it was easy to convince my team: some thought it wasn’t in a ‘serious’ enough format and it was just a gimmick to jump on the hi-tech bandwagon.”

Creating a (truly) non-technical summary

One thing he was clear about from the outset was avoiding gimmicky responses: the young people who looked at the Facebook page needed to make an informed decision, not just tick boxes on an online poll. As well as linking to the core strategy on the Facebook page, the Trafford Council strategic planning team were able to create a simplified non-technical summary (PDF, 3162KB) and questionnaire for visitors to the site.

Creating a non-technical summary that was accessible to non-planners took up the majority of the early stages of the project. Damien says: “It wasn’t easy; we went through ten different drafts of the non-technical summary to make it as simple as possible for people to understand. It’s really difficult because planning has so many terms that don’t easily translate into ‘plain English’: how do you talk about key strategic sites, for example, without alienating non-planners while making it clear what you are talking about? But this needs to happen.”

Damien feels that he was “about 80% successful” in creating an easy to understand non-technical summary, and says it’s something he will definitely do again in the future.

Getting young people involved

After the Facebook group had been established, Damien began the process of publicising it with young people in the area. “Most of my time on the project was consumed with getting young people involved and actually make representations,” says Damien, “There was a prize draw for an ipod for those who participated and I contacted local schools, although unfortunately it was in the two week period before summer holidays so it was hard to reach as many students as we could have.”

He adds, “Over 50 per cent of the schools I spoke to were willing to disseminate posters and fliers for the Facebook page (PDF, 159KB). I also met with the local Youth Council to discuss how posters would look and the best way to get young people involved.”

He also went into a local school as a volunteer as part of a Planning Aid event. It was a positive experience that reinforced his belief that if young people were engaged, they would contribute with enthusiasm. Damien remembers: “I was overwhelmed by the quality of ideas the students produced. They thought of things like ‘green corridors’ running through their town, or using local works of art in public spaces. It really reminded me that with planning, you can do as little or as much as you want to get the community involved.”

Outcomes

Damien believes that although the project was time intensive, it was time well spent. He points out that it was a pilot project that had no similar projects to learn from, so he went with no idea of what the response might be.

However, he explains that the idea wasn’t to switch from real life consultations to online-only ones – it was very much about adding another channel of communication and including more people. Apart from the social networking sites, Trafford also set up community workshops for hard to reach groups that involved no computers at all and printed the non-technical summary in Braille.

“Overall,” says Damien, “it was a successful project. Despite a low number of actual representations, Trafford Council had more than 500 individuals view the Facebook page over 2,000 times.”
These include young people, Damien argues, who are now aware of the local vision for their area. He adds that Trafford now have more than 50 contacts gained from the pilot project that they wouldn’t have had otherwise, which will be entered into a database for the next project and help reach even more young people. 

But can social networking sites actually be a useful tool for engagement or are they more of a token gimmick? Damien believes the jury’s still out, but, he adds, “whether it’s Facebook or not, the future is likely to include a definite move towards online resources in engaging the community. We have to try and adapt to that. For Trafford Council, I think e-consultation is being used more effectively as the local development framework develops.”

Lessons learnt

• Be sure what you want to do – Facebook allows you to set up a ‘group’ or a ‘page’. Damien used a page for the Trafford spatial plan, but there are pros and cons for both. While a page looks better and you can analyse the demographics of the people viewing it, the major disadvantage is the fact that you can’t invite people to join online as you can with a group.
• Facebook is accessible by everyone for 24 hours a day – It requires monitoring, sometimes out of office hours. Damien uses Facebook anyway in a personal capacity, so it wasn’t difficult for him to go on it in the evening to make sure it was up to date and no one had posted anything offensive.
• Build on what already exists – Search for existing online community groups and become a member of them, allowing you to reach a database of people that’s already established. 
• Keep everything jargon free. 
• Media attention is important in publicising the Facebook page and generating interest.
• Your page has to be relevant and up-to-date – People will visit it and lose interest when they see that it hasn’t been updated for a year.
• Find online resources that compliment what you’re trying to achieve – Twitter, for example, lends itself well to planning application updates but is less fitted to public consultation.
• Avoid tokenism: can it actually engage with the target audience? 
• Share ideas and results – Trafford planners are already working closely with their colleagues in Salford Council, who are developing their online consultation capacity, also in the form of Facebook.
• Make sure you choose the name of your group carefully as once you have decided on a name for a page it can’t be changed without starting from scratch.

Links

• Trafford Strategic Planning Facebook page - If you cannot access this link, you can also go to Facebook and search for 'Trafford Strategic Planning'
• Twitterplan
• Facebook