Context

Keighley, a town in West Yorkshire, is poised for significant regeneration. Transport and housing are at the forefront of its development framework.

In collaboration with CBRE and the Keighley Town Board, Bradford Council sought to engage the local community in shaping projects for Keighley's future, with a vision to position the town for strategic future investment. With a tight deadline and the need for community-focused solutions, PlaceChangers was chosen as the platform to facilitate an interactive and inclusive online community consultation.

The primary objective was gathering rapid insights for the Vision preparation, enabling the council to incorporate known and new community-driven ideas into their framework quickly. A digital-first approach was critical to ensuring accessibility, participation, and meaningful stakeholder engagement.

In addition, the council wanted to improve on previous consultation approaches, which were less engaging and perhaps more traditional website surveys.

What was done

CBRE used the PlaceChangers platform on behalf of Bradford Council to deliver a two-week online community consultation, engaging 573 participants, generating 2,052 comments, and collecting 90 new ideas.

Despite the time constraints, the interactive online consultation was user-friendly, allowing residents to share their thoughts and suggestions on proposed projects easily.

The platform’s interactive tools, such as spatial mapping, guided project tours, and what one user called location-specific 'micro conversations' allowed participants to pinpoint specific areas of concern or interest, creating a highly visual and interactive experience.

Local press, leaflets, and social media promoted the message to many residents. Furthermore, the ability to distil results independently made the reporting process efficient, with critical insights ready to be presented to the council and its stakeholders in regular intervalls.

Outcomes

The consultation exceeded expectations, with feedback contributing and helping to evolve the Vision and its constituent parts. Existing proposals can now be prioritised and refined. New project ideas that the council had yet to consider gained strong community support and can be considered. This blend of council suggestions and resident-driven initiatives resulted in a comprehensive and well-informed long list of options that can now be tailored to the town's needs and serve as evidence-based for future funding proposals.

Michelle Rushworth noted:

"The feedback was excellent, I received complimentary comments from both Council officers and members of the public, who agreed on how easy it was to engage with the platform."

The council was particularly impressed with the platform’s cost-effectiveness and speed of deployment, especially compared to other tools used in the past. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with key stakeholders, including Keighley Ward Officers, praising the platform's user-friendly and accessible design.

As a result of this successful consultation, Bradford Council now has a solid long list of projects to position Keighley for future investment, further refinement with the community, and government funding applications.

Status: In further development