Torbay Council needed to construct new sea defences at two beaches. The original design was met with substantial public opposition, demonstrating significant community ‘buy-in’ to the appearance of the seafront. The council decided to pause the project and commission new designs, created using co-design and consultation principles. The new design programme was used not only as an opportunity to create defences that had community buy-in and were aesthetically improved, but also as a learning opportunity across the council on better ways to undertake community engagement and achieve buy-in.
The place
Torbay is a small, coastal unitary authority in Devon, with 22 miles of coastline with 20 beaches, surrounded by green countryside. The council covers main settlements, including Torquay, Paignton and Brixham.
The majority of the population is over 55 years old, with broad affluence that masks some very deprived wards. Tourism is key to the economy – this is the ‘English Riviera’, while Brixham harbour has one of the biggest fishing catches in the UK and Paignton has a pier with seaside entertainment (a smaller scale Blackpool).
This is an area that is very community-minded and can be quite isolated, for example, Brixham has one road in and out.
The challenge
A report from the Environment Agency showed that two beaches needed new sea defences. Some funding from EA was available to deliver this.
- Engineers at Torbay Development Agency tasked with coming up with the plan recommended a standard sea wall should be installed.
- Public feedback on the plans was overwhelmingly negative - people wanted something more beautiful and better integrated with the local area. A local community partnership had started coming up with alternative ideas.
- Council senior directors agreed that they should pause the work and start again with a new consultation
The solution
- Council senior directors agreed that they should pause the work and start again with a new consultation
- Sought and got permission from EA to extend deadline on spending the money allocated.
- Director of Place and senior leaders were reassured by the opportunity to apply for additional funding if the new project created a broader and more exciting master plan for the area around the sea walls. Engineers and EA were happy as long as it did the job of sea defence effectively.
- Council created a project board including staff from different departments.
- Procured LDA Design agency based in Exeter to do a redesign based on consultation and codesign with local people - specifically briefed to work in the open and use co-design
- Combined online and face to face engagement - focus groups, virtual forums, public events
- Focus groups with various council departments to bring staff on the journey so they see the benefits/opportunities the consultation created for their interests (e.g. events team would benefit if new plan protected space for events) and ensure their expertise also shaped the plans.
- Workshop for councillors so they were clear about their role but did not undermine the public response
- Three phases of consultation:
- Find out what local people liked and disliked - open discussions, no preconceived ideas
- After synthesis LDA worked up two proposals for the sites and sought feedback on each proposal
- LDA shared a final design proposal and sought feedback
- Innovations included:
- Agile use of online data in real time to shape decisions about face-to-face engagement, rather than just implementing a preset plan (e.g. seeing high returns form older citizens led to locating pop ups at events attended by families like Paignton Green airshow)
Making use of Children’s Week as an opportunity to hear more from young people and families (underrepresented in all engagement work).
The impact
A more beautiful design that had community ownership
How is the new approach being sustained?
- Now community engagement team has:
- Two community engagement officers
- One community engagement officer seconded from local NHS Foundation Trust
- One internal engagement officer - doing work on culture change and staff communications
- Looking at a graded offer to other departments for community engagement support with