Decision Session – Executive Member for Transport	11 May 2021
Report of the Director of Environment, Transport and Planning

Local Transport Plan 4 engagement strategy

Summary

1. This report sets out an engagement strategy which places resident insight at the heart of the process to develop and implement York’s Local Transport Plan 4.

2. The approach to engagement aligns with the council-wide Resident Engagement Strategy approved at Council on 22 April 2021. This reflects a joined-up approach to policy development ensures consistency and alignment of our ambitions for the city.

Recommendations

3. The Executive Member is asked to:

1) Approve the engagement plan set out at annex A, which secures involvement and influence of residents through the stages required to develop LTP 4.

Reason: To ensure effective and inclusive engagement with residents, businesses, key stakeholders and other groups who travel into and through York

Background

4. A Local Transport Plan 4 for York will be developed throughout this financial year. While insight into public attitudes, behaviours and motivations is central to developing any transport policy, it will be particularly important to add to our emerging understanding of a post-pandemic city.

5. In line with the council-wide Resident Engagement Strategy, the approach to engagement takes a joined-up approach to policy development ensuring consistency and alignment of our ambitions for the city.

6. The Local Transport Plan is one of three core strategies under development, together with the Economic Strategy and Carbon Reduction Plan. Each of these will also inform the 10 year plan. A shared initial phase of engagement will reflect the interdependencies of these core strategies, and ensure that conversations about one theme do not take place in isolation. The multi-theme entry points will also diversify and amplify the range of insight and gather different audience’s perspectives.

7. This resident engagement will be the council’s most inclusive conversation to date. The communications team is working with partners to develop a comprehensive map of partners, networks and inclusive engagement tools to include voices which represent York’s diversity, with a particular focus on the city’s Communities of Identity.

8. This is a Strategy for the whole of York. The proposed approach includes three dedicated touch-points for city-wide engagement and consultation. These touch-points reflect and concentrate public involvement on the areas of genuine public influence, while also increasing understanding the process of developing a transport plan for the city.

9. Each touch-point reflects the LGA Engagement Spectrum/Public Participation framework:

a. Inform: Deliver a communications campaign to the whole city that lets all audiences including commuters, visitors, students and business owners know the council are keen to hear their views, prompting this through case studies, animation, social media polling and other conversational communications tactics. It will also make clear how and when the plan can be influenced and what constraints are already in place, for example due to national policy or funding criteria.

b. Stage 1 – Consult: Public Attitude Survey to explore the broad scope and understand public perception and attitudes of travelling to and around York, including links to working and living in York and environmental impact. This will be aligned with and also form an integral part of the evidence gathering for both the Economic Strategy and Carbon Reduction Plan. The survey will be supplemented with multiple entry points targeting different audiences and their values/starting position.

c. Stage 2 – Inform and Involve: Deeper analysis and review exploring/testing different scenarios (packages of measures) through targeted engagement sessions such as workshops or facebook live Q&As focussed on themes; comprised of community groups, partners and target audiences based around demographics.  The scenarios will be informed by stage 1.

d. Stage 3 – Consult (sanity check): Publish a draft LTP4 and consult on its approach through partner interviews and social media polls to shape the emerging ideas and facilitate conversations

Stakeholders

10. Alongside the LTP the Civic Trust Transport Forum is undertaking its own transport research activities to provoke thought and discussion on transport topics as CYC develops the plan itself.

11. For example, in tandem with the broader consultation, the transport forum are developing scenarios that will be iteratively refined or even redeveloped based on this more comprehensive engagement, ready for stage 2, deeper analysis, in the autumn.

12. To ensure every resident can have their say and all voices contribute to the scenarios that will be tested in the autumn, analysis from the consultation will be shared regularly and openly.

13. Although the feasibility of the scenarios will be sense checked by council transport officers, there will be no involvement of the engagement officers.  This is to ensure resident engagement is not influenced by likely scenarios until stage 2, when the deeper analysis of potential packages of transport measures, begins.

Consultation

14. The information gathered through the above will be supplemented with information gathered from other planned engagement activity, including My City Centre, and City Centre Access together with insight gathered from recent engagement activities such as Talk York, Outer Ring Road, Station Frontage, Navigation Road and The Groves.

Options and Analysis

15. The Executive considered options for resident engagement as part of the Recovery and Renewal Strategy update on Thursday 22 April.

16. The Executive agreed to create a more disciplined and consistent, resident engagement approach. This approach to LTP4 engagement is a key component of that single cohesive resident engagement programme supported by an in-house team that works across the organisation, consolidates emerging feedback, shares principles and assumptions, learns from previous engagement activity, reduces duplication and maximises available budget to ensure conversations join up and lead to a consistent strategic direction.

17. By taking a more disciplined approach, we will also ensure greater inclusivity by actively engaging with target communities, including those with protected characteristics

18. The Executive paper is included in Annex B.

Council Plan

19. This section should explain how the proposals relate to the Council’s outcomes, as set out in the Council Plan 2019-2023 (Making History, Building Communities) and other key change programmes.

Implications

20. This report has the following implications:

· Financial – £200k one off funding for the Local Transport Plan was approved as part of the 2021/22 revenue budget. This will fund the activities identified within the report

· Human Resources (HR) – LTP4 engagement activities will delivered through existing resources in the communications team

· One Planet Council/ Equalities – The engagement will include a published community impact assessment. The Better decision making tool for this strategy is attached in annex C. The key actions resulting from this are:

pg. 7

· Through the resident engagement framework describe activities that have the least environmental impact, preserve the natural environment and promote sustainability.

· Collate data of residents taking part to better understand those community groups who have contributed and those who have not.

· Develop an inclusive engagement toolkit in partnership with community groups with a declared interest/protected characteristic to make sure the engagement approaches used best meet the widest needs.

· Map audience groups by characteristics to identify gaps and explore solutions to address.

· Legal Implications – statutory responsibility to consult on different projects such as the Local Transport Plan and Local Plan.  No legal implications.

· Crime and Disorder – no implications

· Information Technology – appropriate online engagement platform

· Property – not applicable

· Other – not applicable.

Risk Management

21. There are no known risks. All engagement activity will be planned in line with public health guidance.

Contact Details

Author:
Author: Claire Foale Head of Communications Julian Ridge Gareth Wilce	Chief Officer Responsible for the report: James Gilchrist Director of Environment, Transport and Planning
	Report Approved	√	Date	29.04.21
Wards Affected:					All	√
For further information please contact the author of the report

Background Papers:

City of York Council recovery and renewal strategy – April Update

Annexes

Annex A – LTP engagement plan

Annex B – Resident Engagement Strategy

Annex C – Better Decision making toolkit

List of Abbreviations Used in this Report