For community groups and voluntary sector organisations, we offer all levels of support ranging from running half/full day training events on effective community engagement through to designing and delivering full Planning for Real® consultations.

Costs vary depending on the level of support you require, and at every stage we will be as flexible as possible in order to keep costs down. Contact us to discuss your requirements. We will provide a quote for you, and we will be happy to look at ways in which you as a group can take on extra responsibilities through the engagement process in order to keep costs at a minimum.

What we offer community groups

We can help you design an interactive, visual and inclusive workshop or programme of events. It isn’t just about us delivering the engagement process for you. We want to support you in facilitating the events and leading the process. By doing this you develop a sense of ownership and as a group you build your own skills, experience and confidence along the way.

Neighbourhood Action Planning – This is all about you, the community, big or small, identifying suggestions and concerns for your neighbourhood and thinking about how to make where you live a better place. Our Planning for Real® (PFR) process, based on a 3D model, allows residents to register their views on a range of issues / themes, to work together to identify priorities, and in partnership with local agencies go on to develop an action plan for change.

We have worked with hundreds of communities helping them to develop neighbourhood action plans. We can train community groups in PFR or our other techniques and we can offer as much or as little support as you require through the process.

Examples of projects we have worked on

• We worked with a Working Group whose membership was made up of resident volunteers and Town Councillors to deliver an engagement process and follow up workshops to develop a Town Plan for Pershore.
• We worked alongside local groups and organisations working in the Heath Town Ward, Wolverhampton, to deliver an engagement and co-design project aimed at identifying how residents of all ages could be supported to become more active by using local facilities, both indoor and outdoor, based on the “20 minute neighbourhood” model.
• We worked with Boldmere Futures Partnership to deliver a community planning project in order to seek the views of residents about how Boldmere might develop over the coming years and to develop a prioritised Action Plan which would in turn become a Community Plan.

Finding out about projects elsewhere

There is plenty of information online about innovative community projects going on around the country. You can browse for ideas, share your own experiences and make new contacts.

The Civic Crowd aims to map amazing initiatives and ideas for citizen-powered change, providing an open public domain resource where people can share ideas, offer their support and propose actions to be taken.

Launched in October 2011, Your Square Mile is a citizens’ mutual open to anyone in the UK over the age of 16. It gives inspiration, practical advice and tools to anyone seeking to bring about positive change in their local community.