Abergele Place Plan
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Portfolio: Abergele Place Plan
Summary
The Abergele Place Plan is a project led by Conwy County Borough Council, designed to give local residents and businesses a direct say in shaping the future development of the town. The project is based on similar principles to England’s Neighbourhood Plan process. Supporting the normal round of workshops, seminars and public consultations is a custom-made web toolkit that helps to publicise and promote the Plan as well as invite direct participation in the consultation process via the Web and social media.
OpusMap’s toolkit enables planners and policy makers to engage with community residents, businesses and key stakeholders at a very local or neighbourhood level.
Key Project Features
The OpusMap toolkit for neighbourhood planning provides:
- a web page creator and document publishing
- real-time interactive mapping
- polls and surveys
- social media integration
- registration and subscription system
- comment and response tools
- analytic tools for tracking user numbers and activity
Using these tools, plan makers are able to create limitless plans using the OpusMap software. Community members are then able to register online and comment on specific plan details and policies, ensuring legitimacy of the process through direct participation and consultation.
The ease-of-use of OpusMap means local authorities can design and produce maps and documents in-house while thinking about how they are accessed and interacted with from the public users’ perspective rather than simply from the view of the GIS expert or planning officer.
This microsite enabled community residents to easily register and have their say on local plans. The registered details were then securely stored within the OpusMap software.
OpusMap software enabled planners to create the map which highlighted any changes proposed in the local area. By clicking on these highlighted areas, residents would then be taken to documents containing further information on the plans.
From there, residents could then comment on the plans, and add suggestions of their own, which encouraged a high level of community engagement in the planning process.