How Kent County Council creates a flexible online environment for engagement and consultation

Overview

Kent County Council (KCC) is constantly searching for ways to listen to what’s important to their residents and respond in effective and helpful ways. Their strategies and planning are informed by the views of residents, service users, stakeholders, and staff. After launching Let’s Talk Kent, a digital community engagement platform, they carried out over 420 projects — a mix of surveys, idea boards, stories, Q&As, quick polls, and more that have enabled them to better understand their constituency and how they can work together to maximise public value. Their trailblazing engagement efforts are why KCC is known as the ‘listening council.’ They were also finalists in the 2022 Granicus Public Sector Awards in both the Digital Achievement and Community Engagement categories.

SITUATION

Broad, ongoing conversations

KCC set out to have more broad, ongoing conversations with residents about how to achieve better outcomes that improve quality-of-life, efficiency, and effectiveness. They were trying to figure out how to reach less involved residents. To solve this issue, the council decided to invest in a new digital engagement platform. In June 2021, using EngagementHQ — a community engagement solution by Granicus — the council launched Let’s Talk Kent. The wide range of engagement tools provided allowed the council to broaden their ability to engage with residents, service users, partners, and other stakeholders. They were able to fulfil and strengthen both their statutory duty to consult as well as develop the ways in which they engage with residents.

SOLUTION

Exciting, welcoming, and flexible

The vision for Let’s Talk Kent was to create an exciting, welcoming, and flexible online environment for engagement and consultation, with a greater range of engagement tools that go beyond standard surveys. From the outset, KCC wanted to provide a broad range of activities across the platform. It was essential that the homepage, hubs, and project pages were all welcoming and user-friendly while maintaining consistent quality across the whole platform.

To achieve this, they established the following goals:

• Strengthen the formal consultation process and deliver tools to support ongoing conversations that make early and continuous engagement easier for KCC residents, service users, and partners
• Involve the entire organisation to engage residents from a range of backgrounds and areas on a variety of topics
• Seek to understand the views and priorities of residents and service users across Kent
• Deliver consistent and regular reporting that enables the council to understand who is and isn’t engaged
• Provide a central database to facilitate informed decision-making and audience targeting
• Use the data collected to inform how the council engages with the community in the future

RESULTS

Open, safe, and meaningful

The growing number of diverse, registered users means KCC is building a community of engaged residents who are invested in the work of council services. The council is dedicated to the continued growth and involvement of this group of community members. The increased functionality of this new platform means KCC can host hubs for their statutory Highway, Public Rights of Way, and Minerals and Waste Planning Policy consultations that save the council money on separate platforms.

While face-to-face engagement will still be a preferred method in some circumstances, providing greater opportunities for online engagement is broadening the appeal and participation in engagement and consultation activities. Let’s Talk Kent also enables the council to save time and money by providing a wide range of in-house, digital engagement tools that support ongoing conversations with service users, residents, staff, and other stakeholders in a way that is convenient and accessible.