Developers' long-term planning and reputational interests vested in showing communities both time and empathy

ABSTRACT

In a thought-provoking analysis of people’s spiritual attachment to place, this edition sets out the crucial importance of developers fully appreciating the need and benefits of undertaking carefully considered and sensitive engagement strategies with local communities and stakeholders before, during and after development.

The chapter explores the logic of treating early engagement with communities as one of the most important aspects of a developer’s development project - as well as one of the most important ways of developers boosting their planning application credentials elsewhere and managing their long-term reputation with decision makers.

The chapter inherently touches upon the importance of developers very carefully considering the risks of entrusting their strategic communications advice to outside agencies - whose fast paced, sometimes time-pressured cultures often appear at odds with developers long-term planning and reputational interests being vested in showing communities both time and empathy.

PETER KERSHAW

Peter Kershaw appraises and provides strategic advice and due diligence on planning application and planning communications and stakeholder engagement risks and opportunities from the outset of proposed construction projects throughout the UK. Drawing on 15 years high level planning, communications and public affairs experience working in local government, for a Member of Parliament and Minister of State and in a planning consultancy team within the commercial property department of a leading law firm, Peter has a breadth of experience advising on planning, communications and public affairs across a range of development sectors. He has been a regular guest author for major national planning, housing, regeneration and economic development conference programmes; as well as legal and procurement journals. Peter can be contacted via LinkedIn or via [email protected]

Introduction

Written in 1977 when homesick on a beach in France, Dougie MacLean’s emotively written love song ‘Caledonia’ – a love song to his beloved home country Scotland – serves as a powerful example of the potential strength of people’s belonging to the places where they live, wish to live or hold dear.?

Construction PR professionals need to be mindful that clients’ proposed development schemes are as much about the emotional impacts that their proposals will have on the people in the place as they are about the physical changes to the place itself.?

While at its heart the Localism Act 2011 aims to facilitate the bureaucratic process of the devolution of decision-making powers from central government control to individuals and communities, there is also a personal journey behind the process of localism. This can have the psychological impact of awakening a deep-rooted set of existential emotions in people about their sense of place and belonging in the world.

When individuals or community groups gain greater influence over places they care about, through localism they can often feel a deeply (almost spiritual) sense of responsibility to try and protect those places from harmful change. Far from the selfish connotations so often mistakenly attributed to people through polarising nicknames such as ‘NIMBYs’ (‘not in my backyard’), objectors to proposed developments are usually acting with a deep sense of responsibility,?as guardians of places, to protect families’ past happy memories of those places and to safeguard the special qualities of those special places for future generations beyond their own time.??

This is a social phenomenon which PR professionals must be certain to fully appreciate when planning their communications and engagement strategies in relation to facets of localism such as neighbourhood planning, community land trusts, community right to build, community right to challenge, community right to bid, community right to contest and community asset transfer.?

Planning a communications campaign

The continued roll-out of the localism agenda and its devolution of some decision-making powers over new developments to local communities, means that there has rarely been a more important time for individuals, companies and community groups to think very carefully about how effectively they communicate with themselves and others in relation to their feelings about the past, present and future of the places they care about.

PR professionals working in construction consequently have a hugely important role to play in making sure their clients’ ambitions for future development are accurately articulated to communities. They also need to ensure their clients’ reputations among stakeholders are protected through sensitively planned PR strategies rooted in empathy and a deep understanding of the history of places and peoples’ spiritual connections to them.?

Before all else when planning a PR campaign, PR professionals should ensure that they carefully study the local and national context of the proposed development scheme.?

In an era where the UK is experiencing an unprecedented housing supply crisis and where planning decision-making functions are increasingly being shifted towards neighbourhoods, there is now a growing sense of pressure on local communities to make the right decisions for their area and for current and future generations currently locked out of the housing market in their local area.?

Localism has created very difficult tensions around the highly emotive issue of how places should change and how local decisions can have a huge impact on people’s future economic and personal plans.?

In this respect, the overuse of emotionally-void specialist construction or planning terminology should always be avoided and wherever possible replaced with more inclusive and easier to understand plain English versions of technical construction or planning phrases.?

The tone and wording of such campaigns should also be conversational and non-presumptuous. This allows all affected parties to express their views on the pros and cons of both the principle of future development and the specifics of such proposals.

Localism and the rise of local and social media

Hand-in-hand with the rise in localism, there has also been a noteworthy shift in power away from national mass media outlets and traditional campaigning and engagement tools such as paper-based leafleting and surveys, towards a more diverse array of new and upcoming local media sources including social media.?

Social media has become a key communication tool for both campaigners against developments and for PR professionals acting for development clients within the construction sector.?

For objectors, social media has become a cheap and easy-to-use method of organising objectors into a coherent and well-informed campaigning unit. While this creates new areas for PR professionals to monitor and engage with in the interests of protecting their development clients’ interests and reputations, if executed effectively it also equally presents positive opportunities for PR professionals to disseminate accurate information about their clients’ proposals and to better understand and engage with objectors.

However, it is vital that PR professionals recognise the time and staff resources that need to be put in to properly monitor local media and social media and to spend time initially locating the digital spaces that local residents frequent and engage with.?

It is also clear that with the rise of village Facebook and WhatsAapp groups, there are some areas of the digital sphere which are difficult for PR professionals and their clients to engage with because these forums are often private spaces for groups of individuals to communicate in - and where new members usually need the approval of the group’s administrator to be able to join.?

In such cases, there is a higher risk of inaccurate information about a client’s scheme being discussed in private among residents and left unchallenged. Consequently, it is important for PR professionals to try and learn how the group’s administrators can be contacted so that channels of communication can be established in the interests of transparency and dissemination of accurate information for their clients. For example, by making early contact with the administrators of these groups to offer to send them regular update e-newsletters, you are not only helping to dispel hidden myths and Chinese whispers about clients’ proposals, but also potentially making friends by helping to supply the administrator with useful content for circulation and showing the group members your client is not only?transparent about their plans, but also keen to engage with them to garner their constructive feedback on emerging plans.

Local media and social media outlets are also rapidly increasing in number, with the saturation of mobile phone ownership across all age groups, and people of all generations increasingly able to use their mobile phones to produce and broadcast information.?

In areas of professional life outside of construction PR, other industries have also sensed the danger of unmonitored local and social media. In a culture of instant online feedback,?those companies who dedicate the time and resources to responding and engaging in the right way have a better chance of understanding the misinformation and hostile views circulating about them; and have a better chance of ensuring that such views and misinformation does not spread to the silent majority of residents and readers who may otherwise assume that there is no smoke without fire.?

Through PR professionals having an ongoing awareness of the diverse array of channels where their clients’ development proposals can potentially be discussed, it can also help in the identification of potential individuals or groups who might be supportive of their client’s schemes by virtue of other campaigns they are championing. These individuals or groups can then be pro-actively approached in order to explain clients’ proposals to them and to see if they would be willing to support clients’ planning applications. Supporters can also be sought through public facing media or community events, to raise awareness of the planning application and where supporter cards can be distributed if they wish to submit supportive comments towards a planning application.

Localism and Neighbourhood Planning

Neighbourhood Planning has advanced at pace and, with it, a shifting of power away from Whitehall and into the hands of local communities and local councils at all levels. With this trend coming hand-in-hand with increasing devolution to the regions including new Mayors, a noteworthy shift of power has emerged.?All stakeholders in construction need to be aware of the new threats and opportunities to projects emerging from the shifting landscape.

In relation to where the hearts and minds of local communities will be won and lost in localism:I

If we want to see more housing, either as a nation, local community or as a developer - the easiest way to do that is to have the community more accepting of development, and communities are accepting of good-quality development of an appropriate type in an appropriate place.

In summary, the Localism Act 2011?placed a legal duty on local planning authorities to support and advise groups that want to undertake Neighbourhood Planning.

These groups can include:

? Parish Councils and;

? Groups of people (including residents, businesses and local councillors) who are designated as a ‘Neighbourhood Forum’.

Neighbourhood Planning allows communities to prepare:

? Neighbourhood Development Plans

? Neighbourhood Development Orders; and

? Community Right to Build Orders

It is going to be more important than ever for developers to try and engage in the Neighbourhood Plan-making process in any areas where they are likely to look to develop in the future. Doing so will help demonstrate their long-term involvement in the development of a community is genuine and transparent, thus helping to reduce mistrust between developer clients and local communities in the process. If a developer’s future planning application is subsequently refused, they will also then be well positioned to illustrate to the Planning Inspectorate that they have been engaging in local community issues for a long time and are not just fly by night speculative developers who have no real long-term interest in the areas they are seeking to change.?

Public Affairs and Planning professionals can play a pivotal role in this process by providing monitoring services for their clients to track the progress of neighbourhood plans and to provide strategic counsel as to how clients can best meet with local councillors, residents groups and other stakeholders to articulate their company’s ethos and to openly listen to those stakeholder’s hopes, fears and aspirations for the future evolution of their area.

When it comes to preparing and submitting planning applications, the rise in neighbourhood planning has significantly increased the importance of PR and Planning professionals to developers. Developers bottom line and future growth is now at great risk if they fail to treat early community and stakeholder engagement as a vital part of securing planning consent and maintaining their long-term reputation amongst influential decision-making stakeholders.

As one local resident previously whispered in my ear, “this piece of land in the village is like nanna’s wedding ring, we will only hand it over to who we feel we can genuinely entrust it to.”

It is vital that PR and Planning professionals help their clients to fully understand the importance of getting to know everything about nanna: - and the importance of them being genuinely respectful and caring of her, of her legacy; and of the feelings her family, friends, former colleagues and wider community had about her (and continue to hold dear about her).

PR and Planning professionals can do this by ensuring their clients set up thoughtful programmes of engagement before a planning application is submitted, in order to give residents and stakeholders a genuine opportunity to understand more about their client and their client’s development plans. These one-to-one briefing sessions, or village hall drop-in sessions, should always be held early enough in the planning process to ensure that residents have a genuine chance to influence some aspects of the final submitted plans.?A newsletter to residents should also always be distributed at the time of submission of the planning application to update residents and stakeholders of the planning application’s submission and any changes that have been made as a result of their previous suggestions.

Conclusion - the rise of the empowered people

The shifting of planning powers to neighbourhoods creates unique tensions between those resistant to changes being made to the places they hold dear, and those who seek new development because of being locked out of appropriate housing and wishing to move on in life.??

The underlying lesson for PR and Planning professionals working in construction is to maintain the highest standards, ensuring as much respect and empathy to those resistant to development as to those seeking to promote or support proposed development. The use of acronyms such as NIMBYs should not cloud the very real social phenomenon of people making very difficult, (and often unselfish), decisions based on their spiritual attachment to place and their sense of duty to protect special places for future generations.?

The rise of localism in an era when the country has had a taste of referenda through the BREXIT referendum has given people a huge taste of having a direct say over decisions affecting their local areas.?

Local populations, as a result of their BREXIT referendum experience, now demand transparency of information and freedom of debate from PR and Planning professionals working for developers. While PR and Planning professionals and developers will never be able to please all of the people all of the time, there is no doubt that effective communication and engagement is the overriding aim to always ensure that people have the freedom to be a part of the conversation and debate around decisions on proposed new local developments.?

A PR or Planning professional’s job in building trust with local communities to facilitate these open conversations must start early in PR strategies. As Australian political strategist Sir Lynton Crosby once mused about campaigning, ‘you can’t fatten a pig on market day’.?

It is very clear to me that a communication professional’s most effective qualities are those of trust and empathy with all sides of the conversation. This is also the right way to building clients’ reputations and long-term planning application credentials. PR professionals or Planning Consultants who chose to speak or behave in ways which erode these traits, or who work at a pace and in a culture which do not value providing time and empathy to communities, will often do so at their and their clients’ reputational peril.