To ensure that outcomes truly reflect the needs and aspirations of those who use and are affected by developments and building projects, meaningful engagement with clients, communities and stakeholders is crucial to all projects, whether they are in the public or private sector.
Producing clear, credible proof of engagement has become increasingly essential for building trust and accountability. But how can architects show that their engagement is more than just surface-level? And how can you prove that meaningful engagement enriches a project?
What kind of progress has been made when it comes to engagement?
There is a suggestion that in recent years real progress has been made in transitioning from tick-box consultation exercises as a statutory requirement of planning to genuine engagement with local stakeholders that in its best expression creates capacity for public participation in the design process.
But one thing that can get overlooked, even in the most democratic of exercises, is documenting the journey of engagement in order to show to a community how their input really did have results.
This can be even more important for the new generation of more socially-responsible place-based impact investors (PBI), and in turn their own investors, who choose to what extent they back a major housing or regeneration development.
“PBI investors will want to see factual evidence of how the engagement process was undertaken and what its outcomes were,” says community engagement champion Mark Hallett, who was Development Director for 18 years at pioneering ‘developer with social purpose’ igloo Regeneration.
He continues: “Even when design teams do consider stakeholder input - consciously or not - they rarely leave a clear audit trail showing how engagement shaped the final outcome. Architects need to be able to present a succinct account of their engagement process and demonstrate how it influenced their design decisions.”
These days Mark wears a variety of special advisory hats, including non-executive directorships at Bristol City Council-owned Goram Homes and Trivallis Housing Association, and sits on the Design Review Panel of the Design Commission for Wales.
Every town and city in Wales is required to produce a Place Plan, and Mark has reviewed more than a dozen over the last two years. What he really wants to see from these exercises is a clear “you said, we did” statement (along the lines of the community asked for this, and this is how we responded), though he says he rarely sees any such evidence so clearly explained.
What are the key principles in RIBA's Engagement Overlay?
In 2024, RIBA launched the Engagement Overlay to the Plan of Work (developed and produced in collaboration with the Association of Collaborative Design (ACD) and Sustrans, and supported by the Landscape Institute), which offers architects and other built environment professionals a standardised approach to engagement that goes well beyond the historic approach to informing and consulting.
Some of the key principles in the overlay include:
- Beyond basic consultation: Moving past informing and consulting to enable meaningful engagement and shared decision-making from the outset;
- Early and proportionate engagement: Advocating for incorporating engagement early and proportionally throughout all stages of the RIBA Plan of Work to avoid costly retrofits and capture key voices;
- Fostering inclusivity and democracy: Creating design processes that are inclusive, responsive to community needs, and supportive of resilient futures;
- Enriching projects with local knowledge: Using local insights to develop sustainable, socially valuable, and resilient neighbourhoods;
- Promoting trust and transparency: Building accountability and trust through collaborative approaches and open communication with communities and stakeholders;
- Enhancing social value: Supporting the demonstration of high-quality engagement to achieve social value outcomes and improve project quality;
- Collaborative approach: Encouraging a collaborative spirit among the client, project team, and community to build trust and deliver better outcomes.
As mentioned above, one of the principles of the overlay is that engagement should begin at the earliest possible point in the project, from Stage 0 where it is an option.
Mark says that Goram Homes has trialed a process where it starts the engagement process before an architect is selected.
“We got the community together and talked about the concept of development and then involved them directly in the selection of the architect,” Mark adds.
Five or six practices were invited to present to the community. Mark says he was careful not to misuse the architects’ time by asking for unpaid design submissions. Rather, the architects were asked to explain how they would approach the development and how they saw the community taking part in a co-production exercise.
What's available to help present proof of meaningful engagement?
The last few years have seen the rapid rise of PropTech – digital approaches to engaging with communities, often as part of the plan-making process. The Ministry for Housing Community and Local Government has a Digital Planning Programme that has the stated aim of transforming how local authorities and the development industry use digital tools to facilitate more inclusive and diverse placemaking.
Mark says PropTech tools have been used for some of the Place Plans in Wales, generating huge amounts of data and leaving planners almost swamped by the volume. The aim is to gather more representative views, which can then be analysed to generate data-driven decisions. The challenge here is turning large amounts of data into constructive feedback that is easy for everyone to interpret.
He cautions that an architect should not rely solely on data-driven conclusions at project level, although if this is done well, digital tools can generate genuine, helpful outputs, which provide good documentation.
Mark also says that there is some very interesting work being done now by a new breed of digitally-led place-making consultant (such as Place Changers), and it's an area that architects should be watching.
Mark is also an Associate of Bath-based social impact advisory firm, The Good Economy, which works on methodologies to support the scaling up of investment by institutions on the PBI model. Its targets are what's known as “patient capital”, which are investors willing to take a long-term view towards socially responsible and sustainable development.
“Architects now need to prove to their own investors that they've genuinely engaged with communities and that the outcomes and solutions that they're providing meet those local needs,” Mark suggests. “It’s important they’re able to bring together a succinct summary of how they went about things and how that has influenced their solutions.”
Download our Engagement Overlay.
Thanks to Mark Hallett.
Text by Neal Morris. This is a Professional Feature edited by the RIBA Practice team. Send us your feedback and ideas.
RIBA Core Curriculum topic: Business, clients, and services.
As part of the flexible RIBA CPD programme, professional features count as microlearning. See further information on the updated RIBA CPD core curriculum and on fulfilling your CPD requirements as a RIBA Chartered Member.
