DHLUC - East Midlands Development Company

Government engagement for DHLUC via East Midlands Development Company 

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Commercial Challenge

In an effort to enhance the integration and design quality of new developments in the UK’s regions, the Department for Housing, Levelling Up and Communities (DHLUC) tasked its regional representative bodies to explore Pathfinders to Strategic Design Codes (SDC), aimed at setting frameworks for multiple local authorities and developers to adhere to.

For its region, the East Midlands Development Company (EMDevCo) appointed Gough to help achieve the highly challenging outcome of collective awareness and buy-in across a number of councils and communities via stakeholder engagement and public consultation.

The project would include working with partner authorities, Broxtowe Borough Council, Rushcliffe Borough Council, Nottinghamshire County Council and more, as well as with design consultants, Mace.

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Human Approach

As a Government Pathfinder Project, Gough was required to plan and execute an unprecedented engagement campaign, considering myriad audience types and interest levels, and generating feedback on a complex set of interconnected factors to inform the emerging SDC.

We concentrated on three key components: detailed and clear stakeholder mapping, inspirational and aspirational content for the communications, along with simple and concise language for broad understanding.

The challenge tested our award-winning approach to the process of powerful and effective consultation. Using all our experience we rolled out a series of bespoke virtual and physical engagement exercises, providing the environment for our client and the wider project team to discuss the SDC with different audience groups.

Our approach allowed the team to adapt to meetings whilst still achieving productive outcomes, regardless of who we were engaging with. These audiences included council planning officers, elected members, local residents, neighbourhood forums and parish councils.

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Results

Our work took a huge amount of pressure off the client, allowing the team to engage at the higher levels knowing everything was in place to relate to and inspire the relevant audiences. The Strategic Design Code is now progressing towards adoption and we received glowing client feedback which you can read in the testimonial section of this website.

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