Between 2008 and 2010 Renaisi led a project to develop a long-term vision for the London Borough of Croydon. It involved the largest ever consultation in the borough’s history with more than 30,000 local people actively contributing their views on how they would like the borough to change into the future. Renaisi Principal Consultant Donna Lightbown project managed the visioning exercise, which was delivered in 6 key phases, including:
Compiling the evidence base
An in-depth evidence base was assembled, which involved an extensive review of existing local policies and strategies; key social economic, environmental and economic data and trends; as well as national, regional and sub regional strategies. This enabled us to develop a comprehensive picture of where Croydon was at the start of the visioning exercise together with the key drivers of change that were likely to have an impact on the borough in the future.
Scenario Planning
This evidence base was used to feed into a scenario-planning workshop attended by key members from across the Local Strategic Partnership (LSP). Members worked in groups to identify the key drivers of change – both opportunities and challenges – that they believed would have the biggest impact on the borough over the next 30 years and which would ultimately need to be reflected in Croydon’s long-term vision.
Consultation and Engagement
The consultation exercise was a radical and exciting engagement process, both in its aims and methods. It set out to give thousands of local people and groups the opportunity to contribute to developing a long-term vision for the borough. This meant co-ordinating the efforts of hundreds of many people and organisations across the public, private and voluntary sectors. It also meant working in partnership to reach beyond those who are already engaged with ‘official’ projects and activity in Croydon using fun, innovative methods to capture their imagination. Some of these tools include the Imagine Croydon You Qube, a Wiki Site, vox popping, voting handsets, participatory events, postcards to the future and others.
Deliberative Planning Workshops
In considering the responses to the consultation it was clear that there were some tensions and conflicts both in terms of the realities of finite resources but also because there are aspirations which arguably contradict others in place making terms. Growth versus sustainability, for example. The primary focus of the deliberative workshops was to address these conflicts, with LSP and partner members working in groups to make the difficult decisions between priorities as necessary.
Vision Development Workshop
The output from the consultation and the deliberative planning workshop provided the basis for the vision prospectus to be drafted. This was then circulated to partners and critiqued during a final vision workshop, which also celebrated the hard work of all of the community groups that were involved in helping to roll out the consultation exercise.
The long term vision has now been used to inform the refresh of the Borough’s Sustainable Community Strategy; and we worked closely with the planning policy team at Croydon Council to integrate the Local Development Framework (LDF) within the vision consultation and inform future options.
For more information about the Croydon Vision, please contact Donna Lightbown, Renaisi’s Head of Marketing and Communications on d.lightbown@renaisi.com.
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