Participatr - Digital consultation and community engagement

Deeper insights.
Balanced outcomes.
Better places.

Participatr creates intuitive, accessible and unintimidating digital platforms for public participation in built environment projects.

We combine bespoke, carefully curated, mobile compatible digital participation tools with intelligent, inclusive engagement activities to gather ideas, opinions and local insight from people of all life circumstances. This, in turn, creates balanced and robust evidence for change and places that meet the aspirations of ordinary people.

We have years of experience in the built environment space, so we understand its unique challenges. But we’re not here to digitise traditional forms of participation. We start from first principles to open up opportunities, create new possibilities and transform outcomes.

What we do

Community mappingWe build inclusive digital engagement plans that carefully consider community demographic indicators such as age, digital literacy, employment, housing tenure, ethnicity, spoken language, health and wellbeing, whilst identifying community leaders, organisations and networks that have a stake and can help build grassroots participation.

Engagement designBased on deep community insight, we create the right mix of social media activity, targeted print media, guidance and materials for community/partner organisations and email calls-to-action to attract attention, pique interest and motivate participation from the people that have a real stake in your project.

Digital participation platform creationDigital participation is not just about getting involved on a mobile device or PC at home, at work or on the move. As well as providing a quick and easy way for people to participate remotely, our interactive digital hubs are also a useful tool to provide information and record insight in face-to-face, video and guided group sessions.

Engagement management toolsOur engagement management dashboard provides deep, real time analysis of participants and insight by location, opinion, sentiment and demographics. The dashboard also provides a range of tools to edit content, manage participant data, generate email blasts and analyse web visitor behaviour.

Our digital participation tools

Issues and ideas map

Participants can highlight a suggestion for a street, building or public space by dropping a pin on a map (using GPS if they're on location) and uploading a photo. Pins are colour-coded to reveal community feelings about a place.

Masterplan feedback map

A masterplan can be overlaid on an interactive map for participants to drop a pin and comment on specific design elements. The map legend colour-codes land uses and design features, allowing participants to zoom in and comment on specific proposals.

Interactive proposals map

Interactive maps can be used to add a spatial dimension to project plans and initiatives. Participants can select an area from the map legend to zoom in, reveal the boundary or focus area, find out more about what is proposed and have their say.

Interactive surveys and polls

Visual polls and surveys help participants influence design principles and project outcomes from an early stage, revealing outcomes in real-time. As plans are formulated, plans and CGIs are presented alongside questions to comment on in-turn.

Rich content pages

Project information and proposals are outlined in a lay person-friendly and visually-appealing format. Images open in a 'lightbox' when clicked, for participants to appreciate every detail of your carefully crafted CGIs and plans on any device.

Virtual exhibition gallery

Participants can view, pan and zoom presentation slides on any device. The slide gallery creates a familiar environment for visitors to take in information about your project where the aim is to present in a more traditional format.

News and events feed

Our platforms make it easy for project teams to keep participants and stakeholders up to date on project progress, as well as provide details of future events, such as drop-in sessions, virtual meetings or opportunities to get involved.

Live project timeline

The timeline sets out key milestones, such as the planning submission or practical completion date, and sets the engagement process within its wider context. It updates automatically, highlighting the current phase of activity.

Deep, real time analytics hub

The engagement management dashboard reports feedback and insight in real-time. It uses a range of metrics, including local authority, ward, postcode area and demographics, to provide deep insights into participant sentiments and opinions.

Social and web visitor monitor

The engagement management dashboard reports when, where, how and how often people visit your digital hub. Hits are reported by location, time, device type and referral website, helping you monitor chat about your project elsewhere on the web.

Email blast generator

Generate personalised emails participants filtered by key metrics, such as location or sentiment. With the Participatr web mail interface, you can reply to participants directly from the project email address (e.g. feedback@yourprojectname.com).

Simple stakeholder management hub

The engagement management dashboard provides a central hub for the project team to store documents, respond to comments and take notes of telephone and face-to-face discussions, ensuring comprehensive and transparent reporting.

What they are saying

"Participatr is particularly good at capturing sentiment, using maps to which consultees can pin comments. These can be instantly seen by everyone – 'real-time' feedback that lends its strength."

""Participatr creates interactive online tools for town planners working on development frameworks and sustainable transport plans to gather ideas, issues and feedback from the public"

""Participatr creates interactive online tools for town planners, architects, developers, local government, others to gather ideas, aspirations and feedback on built environment projects, designed to overcome the real-life barriers that ordinary people face"

"Now companies such as Participatr have developed online consultation tools that allow for participation at any time from any location, allowing engagement of a wider range of audiences."

How we comply

Data securityThe data that we collect from participants is stored on a private, secure server, located in the United Kingdom, owned and operated solely by Participatr Limited. Each Participatr platform establishes a secure, encrypted connection between the user's web browser and the private server, to ensure that information provided is transmitted securely.

PrivacyWe only store participants' names, information about location and email addresses where absolutely necessary, we will never disclose these details to anyone outside of the project team and we will only hold this information for as long as necessary. Our privacy and cookie policy can be found here, setting out in detail how we handle personal data.

CookiesOur platforms do not install or use any cookies other than 'PHPSESSID', which is required for the website to function correctly and deemed to be 'technical' and 'strictly necessary'.

AccessibilityAll platforms created on behalf of public sector organisations include an 'Accessibility statement', setting out how they meet W3C WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards.

The latest tweets from @Participatr on Twitter:

Have you seen this comment on the #BathRiverLine interactive map? https://t.co/xjbGvUTKic at 10:03 on 14th April 2021

.@DTEProject has launched its Pre-Application Consultation (PAC) on plans for 'Our Health Meadow/Ein Dôl Iechyd', a… https://t.co/swSh5jYffY at 09:11 on 14th April 2021

#HaveYourSay 📍✍️👇 https://t.co/DFKsdEn9Ut at 14:54 on 13th April 2021

As COVID-19 restrictions begin to ease, get in touch to find out more about how our digital tools can help tell you… https://t.co/J3Rjp5NjHf at 18:56 on 9th April 2021

Pillar Land Securities and Coln Signature Homes, together with the Newton and Noss Community Land Trust, are propos… https://t.co/5OMQZTp2D9 at 10:11 on 30th March 2021