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Deeper insights.
Balanced outcomes.
Better places.

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

We then combine them 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



Digital participation platform creation

We create independent, bespoke digital platforms for each project, integrating the right digital tools for the job and carefully crafting the look and content of the website to tell the right story, integrate with your established brand and capture the right community insight.

Community engagement

Building on our extensive engagement experience, we offer a range of services to complement your digital platform and encourage people to visit it. This includes stakeholder mapping, publicity design and distribution, social media promotion and outcomes reporting.

Deep-dive community analysis

The Participatr dashboard provides deep, real time analysis of opinions, sentiment and feedback by location (including postcode, ward, council, LSOA, MSOA, parish and constituency), organisation, role, demographics and keywords. Tags can be assigned to feedback posts for more sophisticated analysis.

Stakeholder management tools

Our purpose-built CRM logs, sends, edits and tracks stakeholder communications, and our webmail interface sends and receives emails from your project email address. The system automatically captures incoming and outgoing mail, making correspondence management quick and easy.

What makes Participatr different?



We understand engagement

We’re experienced engagement practitioners with digital know-how, rather than techies or sales people, having stood in village halls and been ‘at the coalface’ of community engagement for over 13 years. Since Participatr's inception back in 2016, our product has been designed to address the ‘democratic deficit’ in built environment decision-making that we’ve observed first-hand.

Our product is truly flexible

We're a sustainable micro business and we don't have investors looking for a quick return, meaning that we can focus on listening to our customers and shaping our product to meet their needs, rather than scaling up. In practice, this means you'll get a finessed, carefully crafted, interactive digital hub for your project, rather than something which looks and feels like a ‘cookie-cutter’ survey tool.

Our toolkit is constantly evolving

We evolve our digital tools continuously based on what works (and what doesn’t), what's useful (and what isn't) and the real-life requirements of our projects and the communities that they affect. We're not interested in ‘next big thing’ or what our competitors are doing, only what works and what doesn't. Everything we do is tried, tested and effective.

Our projects

Click here to open this map in a new window

Our tools

Issues and ideas map

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. Clickable map boundaries signpost to project information and other opportunities to participate.

Masterplan feedback map

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 proposals. Users can toggle between layers showing different plan options or parameters.

Interactive proposals map

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 or click a map focus area to zoom in, find out more about what is proposed and have their say by completing a pop-up survey or live poll relating to that location.

Interactive surveys and polls

Interactive surveys and polls

Visual polls, surveys and questionnaires 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

Rich content pages

Project information and proposals are outlined in a bespoke, lay person-friendly, thematic, smartphone-compatible 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

Virtual exhibition gallery

Participants can view, pan and zoom presentation slides, document pages or display panels 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, events and content feed

News, events and content feed

Our dashboard-based content manager makes it easy for project teams to independently keep participants and stakeholders up to date on project progress with regular news updates, as well as provide details of future events, such as drop-in sessions, virtual meetings or opportunities to get involved.

Live project timeline

Live project timeline

The timeline sets out key milestones, such as the programme of events, the planning submission or practical completion dates, and sets the engagement process within its wider context. It updates automatically, highlighting the current phase of activity or opportunity to get involved.

Deep, real time analytics hub

Deep, real time analytics hub

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

Social and web visitor monitor

Social and web visitor monitor

The dashboard reports when, where, how and how often people visit the front-end of your digital platform. Hits are reported by location, time, device type and referral website, helping you monitor chat about your project elsewhere on the web, including social media platforms, blogs, campaign websites and search engines.

Email integration

Email integration

Send and receive messages from your project email (e.g. hello@projectname.com) using the dashboard and dedicated webmail feature. Incoming/outgoing emails are automatically logged in the dashboard, and you can generate emails to stakeholders by location, sentiment, organisation, role or opinion.

Purpose-built stakeholder CRM

Purpose-built stakeholder CRM

The powerful, purpose-built CRM logs, tracks and captures stakeholder correspondence, reporting running metrics by type, category, sentiment, discipline, tags and response status. Forward correspondence to your project email address to automatically log it in the system.

Insights

Accessible and engaging - is it possible?

Accessible and engaging - is it possible?

Mon 27th Nov 2023 at 14:00

Web accessibility is a legal requirement for public bodies when launching digital services, but it can come at the cost of interesting and visually engaging design. We explore how to balance design with accessibility when launching a public participation platform.

What they're 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 security

The 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. Find out more about our data security measures.

Privacy

We 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 only keep them for as long as necessary.

Our privacy and cookie policy can be found here, setting out in detail how we handle personal data.

Cookies

Our 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'.

Accessibility

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

Get started

We have answered some of the most common questions that we get asked about Participatr's services below. Please take a read through and, if you're happy with what you see, complete the form below to request a demo or request a quotation.

The cost of your subscription depends on how long you need your digital platform to be live for. Subscriptions are available in 3 month increments, ranging from 3 months to 2 years in length.

The base cost of the platform is £3,300 (exc. VAT), and the subscription costs £450 (exc. VAT) per 3 month period, based on an up-front commitment.

The platform subscription can be extended at any point during the subscription term (or for three months after the subscription has ended) for £250 + VAT per calendar month, should you require the platform to be active for longer than the initial subscription period.

You’ll receive unlimited support and there’s no limit on how many changes we will make to the platform content or digital tools, such as interactive maps, questionnaires, polls or contact forms. We'll be on hand every step of the way.

Your digital platform can be used to facilitate unlimited stages or phases of public participation on one project (one or more linked proposals or initiatives within a defined geographical area). If you would like to facilitate public participation on more than one project, this will require additional fixed-term subscriptions.

Our aim is provide certainty with a fixed cost subscription, including all of the tools and services that you need to create and manage your digital platform over the time period that you need it for. Our subscriptions include the following:

  • Registration of up to two .com and/or .co.uk domain names (e.g. yourprojectname.com) to link to your platform
  • A W3C 2.1 AA-compliant website front end, with bespoke branding, logos, imagery and web page structure
  • Setup and deployment of unlimited instances of Participatr’s digital tools (detailed here), alongside unlimited HTML content pages, including text, imagery, video and animations (within the scope of the project)
  • One project email address (e.g. hello@yourprojectname.com), which can be used to send and receive project correspondence through the project dashboard, a simple webmail interface and or a desktop email client
  • Setting up dashboard access and automatic email notifications for unlimited members of the project team
  • Full access to the project dashboard providing real-time, deep-dive feedback analysis, as well as a full-featured stakeholder CRM, web visitor analysis, email communication tools, on-demand data exports and simple content management tools
  • Automatic logging of stakeholder interactions and email correspondence through the project dashboard
  • Stakeholder database upload and set-up - we'll take your existing database of stakeholder contacts and upload them to the system, so that you can use the Participatr dashboard to send, receive and manage stakeholder correspondence
  • Unlimited support during the subscription period, covering dashboard assistance, content or technical updates to the platform, and to address any ongoing technical queries
  • Ongoing hosting, domain name registration renewal and secure data storage and management
  • Branded social media artwork - we'll create a custom-branded graphic to promote the digital platform for your project on social media platforms
  • Standard privacy and cookie policy, accessibility statement and website terms of use
  • Service levels in line with our commitments

We offer a range of additional services to complement your digital platform and get more people to visit it. This includes:

Stakeholder mapping - £665 + VAT

We'll use our vast experience of community and stakeholder engagement to dive deep into your community and identify the people and organisations that have a stake in your project and can help promote it to the wider community. Once we've identified these stakeholders, we'll upload their details to the Participatr platform so you can see where they are, who they are, what their stake is and start communicating with them.

Publicity design and distribution - £1.50 + VAT per postcard

We can design, print and distribute an A5 postcard or enveloped flyer for households and businesses (by 2nd class post) to find out more about your project and find out how to get involved. This might contain an image, information about your project, a link to your digital platform and/or alternative ways to get involved for those without internet access/capability.

Social media promotion - £250 per week

We'll create a social media promotion campaign that places links to your digital platform in the Facebook, Instagram, Threads and X (Twitter) feed of people that you're keen to hear from, based on geographical location, age or life status. These links include an image and text that piques interest in your project, encouraging them to click through and get involved. Social media promotion typically results in approximately 250 additional digital platform visits per day.

Outcomes reporting - £500 + VAT per report

Whilst all Participatr platforms provide access to real-time digital reporting through the dashboard, we know that some projects and organisations require a static report detailing the outcomes of the public participation process. We'll create a custom-branded report after the participation process (or participation stage) has finished, summarising feedback captured by the digital platform.

No, we don’t offer self-service/SaaS software for creating consultation pages or surveys. We create digital consultation pages and surveys on your behalf, as part of a fully managed service.

The benefit of this approach is that we can design a digital participation platform that is custom-built to the specific needs of your project, rather than relying on a cookie-cutter, ‘one-size-fits-all’ system that never quite fits your requirements.

However, our platforms do provide some content management features for you to manage web content independently, such as news articles, events, timeline entries and HTML information pages (we will need to set up all forms, surveys and questionnaires on your behalf).

Once you’ve signed and returned your service agreement, we’ll get to work straight away. We’ll ask you to confirm a domain name (i.e. yourprojectname.com or .co.uk) to use as the website address for your digital platform, and any brand requirements that you have. We’ll then register your domain name(s) and start getting everything set up, ready for you to supply us with web content, surveys, maps and other media that you would like to include on the digital platform.

We work with a range of document, image, video and GIS file formats, and we’ll work with you to get the information that we need in a format that we can use. We’re also happy to advise on best practice and help curate your written content, images, maps and survey questions to make them as user-friendly as possible for members of the community.

You can read our full terms and conditions of service by clicking here:

Terms and conditions of service

Make a request

Complete the form below to request a demo or request a quotation. If you have any questions, please refer to the frequently asked questions above. If your question isn't answered in the FAQs, please send us an email at hello@participatr.co.uk.

What would you like to request?



Are you interested in any additional services?







What subscription length do you require for the digital platform?

Prices quoted excluding VAT at 20%









Which digital platform features are you interested in?














If you are interested in information postcard design and distribution, please provide some details so that we can provide an accurate quotation

Postcard distribution is provided on the basis of sending to all residential and business addresses within a specified radius around a geographical location (postcode).

If you're interested in social media promotion, how many weeks do you require it for?

If you're interested in outcomes reporting, how many reports do you require?

About you

Your personal information is captured, held and processed by Participatr Limited, who make decisions about how personal information is captured, held, processed and analysed, meaning that they are data controller for the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation.

Your name and email address is used to identify you as a single respondent. All of your personal information is held in a secure database on a server located in the United Kingdom. For more information about how we use your personal information, please visit our privacy policy.