Gloucester City, Cheltenham and Tewkesbury Borough Council plan for population growth with INOVEM

INOVEM Web 2.0 technology selected across three bordering councils to increase work efficiency and increase consultation methods

Posted Wednesday 20th January, 2010

INOVEM, a developer of collaboration and consultation software, has been chosen by Gloucester City, Cheltenham Borough and Tewkesbury Borough Councils to enhance consultation exercises for the three councils and local residents via INOVEM Consult, a Web 2.0 technology.

The three councils needed a consultation platform to support and drive a Joint Core Strategy (JCS) which requires the councils to look into future planning and development across the area to accommodate growth.

The requirement for detailed planning processes and in depth future proposals resulted in the councils reviewing online consultation tools to enable them to easily engage and co-ordinate with each other. The need for a robust technology to provide a collective visibility and present issues to stakeholders and the public led to the selection and implementation of INOVEM Consult.

INOVEM Consult is a powerful and highly configurable framework for managing, deploying and analysing consultations across a range of media from interactive questionnaires, feedback against sectional documents or online discussions. It enables organisations to present issues to stakeholders and the public online in a clear and understandable way to encourage participation and response. Data is securely stored in a structured format, enabling the councils to easily share information, build a solid evidence base and to conduct reliable and accurate analysis across collective data sets.

INOVEM's Consult provides the three councils with an easy to use consultation framework that can be employed at speed. More importantly, the user-friendly web-based system means the councils could start using it immediately, without prolonged training times.

INOVEM Consult has enabled a better working relationship between citizens and the three district authorities. Now, stakeholders can make comments on interactive planning documents, against any paragraph or policy, encouraging a high and equal level of participation and simplifying how Gloucester City, Cheltenham Borough and Tewkesbury Borough Councils report findings from the JCS public consultation back to local residents, internal and external stakeholders.

Georgina Wood, Planning Policy Officer for Gloucester City Council said: -We required a system that was so user-friendly that it encouraged everyone to use it. We use INOVEM Consult to present issues to the public in a clear and understandable way and to collect feedback from a wide range of users.

The right technologies, such as INOVEM, can transform how public sector bodies engage and consult with citizens and stakeholders alike.'

John Glover, Sales and Marketing Director at INOVEM, said: -We understand that planning projects undertaken by local government can be particularly time and money sensitive. We were able to offer Gloucester City, Cheltenham Borough and Tewkesbury Borough Councils a service that helped the Joint Core Strategy to be up and running within in a short period of time. The need for effective web 2.0 technologies has never been greater, and public sector organisations understand the value that they get by being able to better engage with citizens and stakeholders and to fulfil their duty to involve. -

This article was posted on Wednesday 20th January, 2010.

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