Public consultations in planning: celebrating the input of local people
From the outset of The Active Way project, we have prioritised speaking with local people who live, work and visit St Andrews and the surrounding areas to help us achieve our aims of making it easier, safer and more fun to walk, wheel and cycle in and around the town.
The ways in which we have done this have varied: we’ve posted updates on our website like this one; emailed our subscribers (scroll down to the bottom of the page to sign up for occasional email updates on key project milestones and outcomes); shared information with followers on our social media channels, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter; met with local people in person at a wide range of events across the town; and we’ve conducted online surveys and map based questionnaires.
The public consultations that we’ve held both online and in person have been truly invaluable parts of the process by giving us direct access to the experiences of local people and their feedback on the project as it develops. Hundreds of people have responded to our requests for information on how they travel, most recently during our map based consultation using the online platform Maptionnaire.
We were delighted for our work to be featured in a best practice spotlight by the Maptionnaire team who commented on how effectively we used the tool to make residents and those working in the area a significant part of the process. You can read the full article at the link below.
Very soon we’ll be publishing information about the route intervention options that are being proposed based directly on information from local people who have responded to the map based questionnaire mentioned here and earlier rounds of consultation, as well as the expertise of our team of active travel specialists.
If you are one of the people who have engaged with the project in any way since we began our work, we thank you for your input and continued support as we work hard to improve local active travel infrastructure.
