Our experience has been that Councils have generally taken a cautious approach to the amount of notification to local communities in these unprecedented times, insisting on significantly more notification of the public, and particularly those close to a site, than was typically necessary pre-COVID-19. There is also an expectation that, as consultations now take the form of online booklets, the consultation will go on for a longer period. Typically, in-person consultations are a single day, whereas online consultations are usually expected to stay available for viewing and comment for 1 – 2 weeks.
Clyde Shanks has undertaken a number of community consultations for Major Developments across NI in the past six months and some of these can be found on our webpage www.clydeshanks.com. These have covered a variety of development types in locations across the Province. We negotiated the structure of the consultations with the local councils. For a proposed housing development at Gransha Road in Bangor we neighbournotified over 160 properties. That has been successful in generating significant local interest, including from local politicians. As many as 80 responses were received from local residents to the Bangor consultation.
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This level of engagement and feedback was helpful in shaping both the proposed development and the supporting information accompanying the planning application. Whilst it is anticipated that in-person community consultation events will return in the future when circumstances allow, important lessons have been learned in the move to on-line consultation and these are likely to remain in some form given their success during the current pandemic.
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