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Public meetings and village exhibitions were felt to be the most effective methods of engaging people in the Parish Planning process.

It was strongly recommended that the ‘active’ parts of the Parish Plan should be done over the summer months because deliveries and collections will be easier and people are more likely to attend public meetings and other events.

Six major elements were identified as being critical to successfully engage community support for a Parish Plan:

1. Effective publicity and communication is essential. Raising awareness of the Parish Plan and what it can achieve is critical. Open days, public meetings and exhibitions must be well publicised if they are to be well attended. Vehicles for publicity have included village newsletters and notice boards, Parish Plan newsletters, local radio and newspapers, flyers, posters and websites. Regular feedback about progress is crucial to maintain interest and momentum.

2. Public meetings. Public meetings were felt to be the best way of initially raising awareness of and launching the Parish Plan process. Meetings later in the process allow you to undertake further consultation on issues identified, or to provide feedback regarding findings or progress made.

Public meetings and village exhibitions were generally well attended, with around 200 attendees usually reported.

Be clear about what it is you want to achieve from the meeting. Anticipate some of the issues that are likely to be raised and plan how best to manage the meeting i.e. how to deal with those who try to sidetrack it for their own agendas.

Piloting the questionnaire was felt to be crucial as it ironed out potential problems and also helped to engage people. Participants agreed that as a method of consultation the questionnaire gave the most reliable information and allowed the most reach.

Keep the number of questions as low as possible so as not to overwhelm respondents.
Do your homework properly, this will allow you to keep the questions relevant and to minimise the number of open questions which are very time consuming and difficult to analyse.
A final ‘comments’ section can be more useful than several open questions. One group’s final question was: “Please list the three things that you would like to happen locally within the next 10 years”. This guides respondents to carefully consider their response and also to prioritise important local issues.

It is important that all sectors of a community are given the chance to contribute to a Parish Plan. Some communities tackled this by designing separate questionnaires for different sectors of their populations whilst others took a less formal approach, for example they held sessions with schools and local business clubs.

4. Methods of distribution and particularly of collection were important as this seemed to significantly influence response rates. Where there was a postal return for questionnaires the response rates were generally low but where questionnaires were hand delivered and collected the response rates were much higher. The majority of groups stressed that recruiting and motivating collectors is absolutely crucial.

“It takes a lot of effort but is well worth it to achieve a high response rate, then service providers, funders and local Elected Representatives cannot argue that the sample is not representative!”

Having someone in overall charge of collectors, giving them a clear brief and written instructions, and motivating them by ‘friendly harassment’ all help to ensure a high response. This is a huge time commitment as collections sometimes involved 6 return visits.

Keep track of the response rate for each collector to enable you to identify where there might be issues; e.g. there was a very poor response from a former council estate in one village.

Organise ‘incentives’ to reward early return of questionnaires.

Only give people small areas to collect from; a maximum of 25 households.

5. Incentives to complete the questionnaire. More than half of the groups interviewed offered a ‘prize draw’ as an incentive for people to complete their questionnaire. The incentives offered were shopping vouchers ranging from between £50 and £100. There was little evidence to suggest that incentives actually facilitate higher response rates.

Good practice – Incentives. Consider having a well thought out prize draw that encourages early response and ensure that the distribution of the questionnaire is very well publicised, however, there appears to be no substitute for knocking on doors and talking to people.

6. Village exhibitions and Open Days. All of the groups held open days and / or village exhibitions. These were generally well attended with around 200 attendees being commonly reported. Open days and village exhibitions were generally used to: provide feedback on key issues, to display materials, to report progress, to undertake further consultation, to gather more data, to work on specific issues and to design and gain support for particular actions.

Good practice – Village Exhibitions and Open Days. Give small groups of residents disposable or digital cameras to photograph what they like and dislike about pre-designated areas of the village. The photography can be done in the morning and when completed, cameras can be collected and the films developed for display and discussion in the afternoon. The information provided can form a big part of the planning section of the Parish Plan.