“There is a drop in the percentage of people who think they can influence local decisions.”

This statement, which Civic Societies will certainly understand, comes from the Government’s new consultation paper, “Unlocking the Talent of Our Communities”, which asks a range of questions aimed at finding out what people want to see in terms of having a greater say in improvements to public services - which of course include planning services - local accountability and opportunities for enterprise.

Government will use the results of this consultation to inform an Empowerment White Paper, to be published in the Summer, so our immediate aim is to send a response to the consultation which will set out for Government the views of our membership of 250,000 people in over 700 civic societies.

Please click here to open the questionnaire and once complete please press the “submit” button. The deadline, unfortunately, is short - 7th April - but it is very important for us all that the Civic Trust engages with Government in this initiative. May I therefore ask you to fill in and return the questionnaire so that we can send Government a strong and constructive document representing the concerns, experience, aspirations and, of course, the great value of the civic society movement.

Please feel free to forward this to your individual members for them to respond directly to us if they so wish

Yours sincerely

Peter Bembridge

Managing Director
The Civic Trust

Please click here to open the questionnaire and once complete please press the “submit” button. The deadline, unfortunately, is short - 7th April - but it is very important for us all that the Civic Trust engages with Government in this initiative. May I therefore ask you to fill in and return the questionnaire so that we can send Government a strong and constructive document representing the concerns, experience, aspirations and, of course, the great value of the civic society movement.

I spent some time late this evening typing my comments into this online questionnaire. Unfortunately when I came to submit it the connection had been lost (timed out) and all my words were lost. Sorry but I don’t have the time to do it all again. I only say this to warn others who may respond: you may wish to prepare your answers in a text editor or word processor first, then paste them into the online questionnaire and submit relatively quickly.

On a positive note, I find this forum and the online questionnaire empowering.

We’ve tested the online form, and there doesn’t seem to be a problem - perhaps it may be related to your internet connection? If you’d like to talk through your comments rather than type them out again, please phone me on 0151 231 6903 and I’ll make sure they’re registered.

I have posted a response questionnaire - twice - hope it has gone through - but cannot see it here!

We don’t have a record of your response, and have tested the site again so I can confirm that it’s definitely working. We’ve had 65 other responses to the consultation so far, so I’m not sure why your response isn’t getting through. Perhaps you could cut and paste your comments from the form into an email and send to Ian Harvey () and we’ll make sure that your comments are included.

Our Society aims to keep on good relations with the LAs in our area.  We do not have specific contractual ‘work’ relationships.  Our role is rather that of friendly critic and advisor on planning applications [major projects and listed builds and other key buildings] and occasionally as objector [usually with others] to planning applications and pre-applicationss [which may have been endorsed by the LA, but in our opinion not rest on best evidence/ local benefit/wider policy concerns over long-term impacts], and, developing policy guidance in relation to local priorities.  We thus work mainly with both planning and design and heritage.

I was wondering how would I go about accessing a copy of the consultation on “unlocking the talents of communities” that we responded to several weeks ago?

Hi LFerhus, I have put a copy of the ‘Unlocking the talent of local commuties’ consultation in the case study section of the Document Library.
http://www.civicsocieties.org.uk/members/document_library/case-studies/