At its best, partnership work can involve local authorities, businesses, community groups and local people analysing concerns and opportunities together, and then developing solutions and shared goals that work for everyone.
Some partnership work and participation is mandatory. Examples of our work here include:
- Planning consultations
- Police or health services seeking consumers’ input for planning and service delivery
- Parks and protected areas consultations
- Community engagement to discover what can support local development and what people would change.
Mind the Gap has staff with years of international and UK experience supporting clients in developing and maintaining effective partnerships across a wide range of settings.
In urban planning we have worked with parishes and neighbourhoods on community and development plans, enhancing gateway routes into towns, and a broad array of community/planning authority consultations. In Africa we have worked with transport planning authorities and community engagement for urban and rural developments. All of these projects relied on effective community consultation coupled to robust planning applications, or action planning and follow-up.
Where a permanent ‘partnership’ is actually overkill, a ‘network’ can provide a space where stakeholders come together for a particular goal, partnering where needed and working individually at other times. In our experience, loose links and flexible networks can sometimes be more useful than a resource-intensive, formal partnership. Either way, we have the experience to help you manage your resources so that energy is used wisely and ‘complete participation’ does not result in ‘complete inertia.’
Mind the Gap’s experience with partnership development and Participatory Appraisal is tried, tested and powerful. If you would like to read a recent published example of our work please click here.
