Enhancing Community Engagement: How Colchester City Council is Innovating Planning Consultations Online
- Convirt 3D Virtual Tours
- Jan 22
- 5 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
December 2025 - Colchester City Council is embarking on a new approach to Public Consultations, using a hybrid approach of 'In-Person' events and online engagement. But online engagement with a twist.
This hybrid approach of online and physical consultations has become familiar in recent times with the goal to extend public engagement beyond the four walls of a public building. In fact a raft of businesses exist in the UK and beyond with the common service of providing an online way to engage the public and to gather views and information online. This is then used by councils to help guide their planning strategies.
2020 and Covid really moved the needle for our virtual industry creating a real need for alternatives to physical visits and events when the public could no longer congregate.
It was at this time Convirt3D was called on by Amey, working in partnership with Trafford Council. They tasked us with creating a virtual space to host Trafford's upcoming public consultation - Urmston Active Neighbourhood.
Convirt3D, at the time, were already specialists in 3D scanning and modelling and we had created hundreds of virtual tours already by the time lock down came along. Amey, through Commonplace, a public engagement platform, had already gathered the data for the consultation when Covid struck and plans had to change to deliver the results and proposals.
Our specific skillset meant we were able to create a product that allowed the scheduled consultation to take place via a virtual room. To cut a long story short, the virtual consultation was a big success with Trafford Council reporting a bigger attendance for the virtual event than for prior 'in-person' meetings.
The Need for Enhanced Public Engagement in Local Planning
Any public consultation faces the challenges of real engagement. Traditional consultations historically have suffered from problems such as limited reach and passive information delivery which leads to low engagement rates. For the councils, the importance of reaching broad and diverse demographics for robust feedback is paramount and feeds directly into creating solutions that truly reflect the needs of their local communities.
Over the past few years many councils have been undergoing something of a digital transformation. Within the general population there is now a growing expectation for interactive, accessible platforms for them to engage with in their civic life.
Virtual Interactive Events: A New Paradigm for Consultations
Virtual spaces like those created by Convirt3D, not only give the sense of 'being there' but also contain engaging multimedia information (videos, info boards, images, links) with the use of clickable hotspots to facilitate exploration and information discovery. They are also more accessible to older members of the community as well as those with physical impairments or anxiety issues. These sometimes marginalised members of the community may shy away from attending these physical 'in-person' events.
In addition, the benefits to the wider public are a more visual, engaging, and intuitive consultation experience in turn benefitting councils and providing a deeper understanding of public concerns with the broader reach. Run in tandem with traditional events in the local library or Town Hall, this broad brush approach works well in allowing people to access the information via their preferred method.
Case Study: Colchester City Council’s Virtual Planning Consultation
Fast forward 5 years and on the back of a successful Virtual Engagement project with Chelmsford City Council, with the help of Steve Rowe from Koru Consulting, it was the turn of Colchester City Council to present their 15 year Local Plan to their residents. Having seen Chelmsford's' virtual event and some of our other events created for our clients, the Planning team at Colchester chose to collaborate with Convirt3D, leveraging our expertise and experience in virtual interactive events.
After initial onboarding, a meeting was held to ascertain the structure of the virtual event platform required and the types of content that could be used. This process is designed to be as streamlined as possible with a number of 'off the peg' rooms available as well as the option for the client to create an entirely bespoke space designed to their exact needs. Guidelines were given for artwork and other media creation requirements. If this is not possible for the client to produce, then we can create the artwork for the client for the various virtual info screens and banners.
For Colchester, their expected outcomes were to be increased public participation and richer community feedback. The consultation ran in tandem with 3 physical public consultation days in Colchester Town Hall for a total of 6 weeks and in that time the virtual event alone recorded over 12,000 views. Our analytics could also see which info boards within the virtual exhibition were receiving the most views, highlighting which areas of their Local Plan were attracting the most interest and engagement.
‘Our motivations for initiating work with Convirt3D was to reach as many residents as possible. We recognise that people have busy lives and an online exhibition allows residents to engage at a time that suits them, rather than being limited to a specific date and time. The engagement statistics of in-person vs online show that increasing numbers of people now access information and participate in consultations online.’
‘Working with Convirt3D was a great experience. They were quick to respond to emails, always happy to help and proactively shared ideas to improve our user engagement . We were very pleased with the service and look forward to working with them in the future.’ - Colchester City Council Planning Policy Team
'I am delighted that Colchester CC chose us as their virtual engagement partner for their Local Plan Consultation. It is very pleasing that they have received a good level of engagement with our virtual event and that it complimented their other methods of delivering the Local Plan information. It's clear that the public need alternative methods of accessing this information and are prepared to use them if offered.'
'In order to get the maximum engagement, virtual events must sit front and centre within the council's Consultation web pages. They can be easily overlooked if hidden within the copy on the page. We advised early on within the 6 week period that the virtual tour access needed to to be more prominent on the Local Plan website, the client responded to our advice which resulted in much improved engagement stats. We ran the engagement stats every week for the client allowing them to see how the visits were ramping up week on week. When the 'in person' visit stats were published by Colchester CC, it became apparent that the virtual exhibition saw 240 times more visits that the traditional event which was fantastic. We know this to be the case based on events ran for many other clients even within different sectors. The technology engages people and keeps them on the website longer.' - Ian Hampson, Director Convirt3D
Parallels with Interactive Events in Other Sectors
Since 2020, Convirt3D have created Virtual Events for many clients predominantly in the manufacturing and education sectors.
Regardless of sector, users enjoy the immersive experience, user-driven exploration and multimedia integration. For our manufacturing clients, our virtual tours extend the reach of their expo stands, maximising their investment and widening their reach. It is also a great tool for following up leads that were generated at the exhibition. For public schools it allows overseas parents to pre-visit from their home and get a feel for the establishment before perhaps making and in person visit.
To see more of Convirt3D's virtual events visit the website www.convirt3d.co.uk/virtualevents
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