Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council: A Long-Term Plan for Towns funding

  • Consultation and Stakeholder Engagement

  • Community engagement

  • engagement strategy

A ten year vision for the borough

Filigree was appointed to explore local priorities through a ten year vision for Rotherham in response to the Long-Term plan for towns funding. We led the community engagement and the production of the report submission. Three priority areas were followed; safety and security, high streets, heritage and regeneration, and transport and connectivity. These three areas were the focus of our engagement; we drew on evidence to introduce these topics to the towns local people. The evidence we gathered allowed us to produce a discussion guide to help understand the town’s perception on the issues. 

 

community engagement with seldom heard audiences

Over the course of six weeks, we facilitated in-person engagement that generated over 550 responses from local people. We also ran featured workshops with businesses, voluntary organisations and young people, as well as seldom-heard audiences, such as people with learning disabilities, physical disabilities and families from the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities.  

A key aspect we were keen to explore was what might help communities feel safer, with potential funding being allocated towards interventions such as wayfinding, signage, community radios and improvements to CCTV cameras. From our analysis, we prepared recommendations for initiatives for the final strategy, including communication approaches to build trust in the local police amongst businesses, residents and visitors to the town.

 

engaging the town board

During the spring/summer, we attended each meeting of the Town Board and facilitated discussion sessions, which enabled us to concurrently write sections of the report. Starting with the vision, we invited views from each member and then crafted a 250-word vision for their review and approval. Similarly, chapters covering the insights and evidence underpinning the priority themes were discussed in group sessions with the board. This led to subgroups being formed to more thoroughly debate future funding opportunities and project allocations gathering nominations for lead organisations or groups for each theme. For instance, we empowered Grimm and CO to lead the project ideation for children with the upcoming Children's Capital of Culture year.  

Project Details

Client: Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council

Status: Complete

Team: Filigree