Plymouth and South West Devon Joint Local Plan

Plymouth City Council, West Devon Borough Council, and South Hams District Council wanted to maximise community engagement ahead of a 2024 joint local plan review. Commonplace was commissioned to build a website, gathering views from local residents between July and December 2022, and develop an AI system to speed up analysis of comments. Using social media to target specific groups, such as young farmers, the exercise generated nearly 11,000 site views and 2,000 contributions. The judges said the approach “has the potential to save hundreds of hours when running a consultation event”.