Southport Town Deal’s consultation and engagement process, which was supported by Stand Up For Southport, has been shortlisted for a prestigious Planning Award.
‘A Whole-Town Engagement: Southport Town Investment Plan’ has been shortlisted in the Award for stakeholder engagement in planning (plan-making or pre-application) category.
In partnership with Turley’s, Sefton Council led the largest recorded response to a single consultation in the town, engaging with thousands of local people, securing thousands of pieces of feedback.
Much of the consultation was successfully delivered during 2020 with Covid-19 requiring an innovative approach to virtual engagement, through partners such as Stand Up For Southport.
The feedback generated formed a significant part of Southport’s Town Deal Bid, resulting in £37.5 million being awarded to Southport.
Dwayne Johnson, Chief Executive of Sefton Council, said:
“The Plan we submitted was informed by the biggest conversation that the town has ever had about its future. We had 7,000 pieces of individual feedback from residents, business and visitors; over 1,000 young people from the town also put their ideas forward. The breadth and quality of consultation and engagement with all ages no doubt helped us to secure one of the largest Town Deals that the government has agreed nationally and across 101 towns.”
Stand Up For Southport owners Phil Gee and Andrew Brown said:
“We would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who gave their views on the Southport Town deal consultation through Stand Up For Southport.
“We received thousands of very valuable comments from local people who are very passionate about the future of our town.
“We now have over 16,000 members in our Stand Up For Southport Facebook group, over 3,000 on Instagram, and thousands more on other Stand Up For Southport social media channels.
“It shows the huge pride that Southport people have in our town, a collective desire to support the local businesses and local organisations that we have here and also a tremendous will to work together to make Southport a better place to live and to work for people of all ages.
“We enjoyed working on this very wide-ranging consultation with others including Sefton Council, Turleys, DS Emotion and others to ensure that local people’s views were sought as extensively as possible on the future of our town.”
The Awards presentation will take place on Wednesday 9 June & Thursday 10 June.
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