Weeknotes S1 Eps 6 Workshop Fatigue….
Workshops, workshops, workshops….. What is the gain?
Workshops, workshops, workshops….. What is the gain?
Our Strategy and Economy team have hosted and facilitated 6 ‘workshops in 12 days…. over 200 people… phew!
That was a ‘proper’ team effort. No matter what your opinion of the value of a ‘workshop’ these have been very successful, energising, and not wishing to repeat myself from previous weeknotes but have really set us of on a positive path of participative engagement for our emerging Greater Cambridge Local Plan. They have been (mostly) well attended and as we made them really interactive, for the large part they were insightful, challenging and provided us with innovative thoughts and ideas to take into further formal stages of consultation later on in the year.
Just for some context, the below intro (written by Hana Loftus in our engagement team) is the starting point for our draft Comms and Participation Strategy which we are making the centre point of how we deliver messaging, enable input and co create meaningful policies and direction in a plan that will look to address some of the complex environmental, social and economic challenges we are living through …
“Local Plan processes can typically lack rounded and representative engagement across the full spectrum of the community in the plan area. Statutory consultees, active community organisers/campaigners, major landowners and planning agents, and certain other groups do engage actively in shaping the Plan.
However, the often the wider community, including residents from diverse backgrounds and geographical locations, small businesses, and even internal officers within local authorities who do not work within planning or related services, have little understanding that a Local Plan is even being developed, let alone how it will shape their lived experience in the future and therefore why their involvement is important.
In the Greater Cambridge area, there is a clear political priority to change the approach on this and put community engagement at the heart of the plan development process. At the same time, the new Local Plan will be tackling some major and very difficult challenges — net zero carbon, biodiversity net gain, appropriate growth, a future that is difficult to predict. These bring with them choices and therefore conflicts and sensitivities — and it is important that this is seen to be resolved in as a collaborative and co creative way as possible within the constraints we work within.
Raising the bar in engagement for the Greater Cambridge Local Plan can be seen both as a civic responsibility towards the residents and businesses on whose behalf the plan is prepared, and a way of integrating as much collective ‘buy in’ to the emerging direction of travel through the process which can help to mitigate and reduce potential challenges that come later on, during the legal processes of plan examination and implementation. It presents the opportunity to lead the way in delivering a genuinely inclusive process that sets a national standard for innovation and best practice. However resourcing this within the timescales available will be challenging and there will be the need to focus on a few elements delivered well.”
We are taking this really seriously!!!! So workshops are a staring point and will be a theme going forward, but we will also need to utilise an array of tools and channels to improve our reach and be able to collect a rich and diverse range views. We also want to be reflexive and incorporate our learning from all aspects of the process each time we carry out any piece of dialogue.
This includes reaching out through video and recorded media which we have not utilised well enough previously… So this may mean you get to see my face (not great!)and more importantly more of my teams faces and hear people actively discussing the issues important to them throughout this process. A lot of this content will be on either of out council websites here and we’ll be sharing through our own channels an social media too…. Keep you eyes peeled.. (I am even thinking about a vlog!!!)
So this has really been the theme of the last two weeks and it has been busy…. Hence my lack of #weeknotes last Friday!
In other news I actually love the summer…. I know this week has been super hot but I am a proper sun worshipper and this is absolutely the right type of weather for me! Problem being is that fell like it’s mandatory cold corona in the garden weather…
This week has been less workshoppy (Not a word, I know…) but still pretty intense. Some of the engagement team Stuart, Hana, Me, Phil, Tom, Terry, and Gareth got together over teams on Tuesday to do a bit of a post mortem on the previous workshops and discuss what was good to take forward and what didn’t work so well. As we are all working to real tight timescales we also made a #weekplan for must do tasks to stay on track for the next few weeks — this included progressing our draft Comms and Participation Strategy which Hana has nailed and getting it on to the agenda for our steering board later this week… After this I was feeling really energised and reflected on how despite some real challenging workloads and deadlines the team are really delivering and being totally awesome! (note that we shouldn’t be taking advantage of peoples good will and professionalism constantly and we need to progress all our vacant posts in the team swiftly to start giving people breathing space).
We promoted 2 of our senior planners this week: Terry and Nancy… Big congrats to them getting to the heady heights of Principals! now need to backfill their roles quick…. Good news though — we have finally got through the final hurdle of our shared structure implementation and recruitment for posts starts next week… Watch this space if your interested in one of the many roles that we will be looking to fill in the coming weeks….
Couple of other things to touch on; Worked quite a bit on developing thoughts around our Economic Development Action Plan which is a joint venture between South Cambs, Cambridge City and The Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP). This is intended as a focussed localised plan for Greater Cambridge that ‘hangs off’ the Cambridge and Peterborough Local Industrial Strategy produced by the Combined Authority which was launched this week by BEIS.
Sometimes working in such a crowded statutory and devolved landscape can have its challenges but it can also bring huge benefits and an ability to co create really innovative solutions with some of the brightest minds in a truly multidisciplinary way. My colleague at GCP Ryan Howsham and Johanna in my team are driving this forward and they have really managed to navigate bringing together a coherent and coordinated narrative together with consummate skill and professionalism. Much work to do but this is gathering pace, more on this to come. (note; I really need to do an expanded blog post on the economic stuff as its something that really needs attention…)
This week has been so full on I think a need to leave it there and include some of the rest of this week in next weeks notes too as there’s just too much to talk about for one blog…
Pods
I listened into the Weekly Economics Podcast last week with Annie Quick, Ayeisha Tomas Smith and Richard Partington. I loved this episode, it really chimes with my own thoughts around the ineffectiveness of GDP as a metric of economic success, and how well being has to move to the heart of how we measure going forward. This echoed many of the views I have been hearing in the workshops we have been undertaking, with a real feeling that there has to be a fundamental shift in economic policy to meet the critical challenges around social well being and climate change.
Music
Well the weather is a continuing theme of my music choices this last couple of weeks; This is a great playlist for a bit of upbeat, cold beverage sipping in the sun…
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1E8KgnEHWPPBXP
Enjoy the heat….