Statement of Community Involvement for Planning Draft Consultation - January 2020
9. Social Media
9.1. The council does use Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to inform residents, local groups and organisations about Council activities. The Council will continue to make use of social media platforms to promote future consultations for the local plan, supplementary planning documents and neighbourhood plans. The use of social media may increase in importance as a method of raising awareness of the issues and documents being prepared for consultation as well as the publicising the methods of responding to a consultation.
9.2. At the moment, the Council is not using these social media outlets as a mechanism for collecting formal consultation responses; however any comments made will be reviewed and may be used to review consultation methods in the future.
9.3. As the use of mobile technology changes and increases, the Council will need to respond to these changes and will consider how to make future planning consultation documents and accompanying documentation, including digital mapping, as easy as possible to use. Most of our planning documents and maps are presently made available as PDF files. However these can be large and lengthy and are not always easy to navigate, particularly if readers are interested in a single topic or a specific geographical area. They are a simple electronic copy of the physical document(s) we are consulting on. This approach doesn't necessarily fit well with modern preferences such as:
- receiving bite-size information;
- 'swipe and tap' mobile technology such as tablets and smartphones; and
- Interactive and shareable content
9.4. We need to strike an appropriate balance between responding to changing trends and technologies, producing the documents we are legally required to and the resources available to the Council.
