A cross-service, cross-agency approach comes across strongly with the learning from the consultation having a wide influence and relevance as a consequence. Their collaboration demonstrates how a single consultation can have impact in a broad range of policies and service areas.

Key learning points 

The role of starting and documenting a conversation with a community about a place was core to the percieved value of the work.

The work done to ‘get out there’ and find people to engage with was key to getting a good response rate.

Despite scale (second largest Local Authority land mass in Scotland) and geography (mainland, lochs, glens and islands) the work reached throughout the area.

Patterns of response could be mapped and re-mapped for particular geographies and communities at different scales.

It clearly highlighted strengths and weaknesses from a health and wellbeing perspective depending on where you live; feeling safe and appreciation of natural landscape were common attributes balanced against poor accessibility and variable outlook for work and local economy.

Follow-up work was important – working with local groups to convert priorities into actions relevant to each community – converting learning into spatial policy. •

The breadth of use and relevance of the output is striking: not only cross-service within the council but also across other Community Planning Partners (fire, police, NHS) private, 3rd sector and social enterprise.

Please note: with the advent of the ‘Group Admin’ function there is now no longer a need for a bespoke website to collate responses