Property PR Hub | Page 3

For consultation practitioners, there is some very valuable information to glean yesterday’s House of Commons’ Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee report on The future of the Planning System in England. VIEWS OF THE HCLG COMMITTEE There are strong arguments in favour of consulting at an early stage (ie, on Local Plans): Arguments advanced in ...

Writing the introduction to my recent book Promoting Property:  insight, experience and best practice, I discovered some fascinating facts about the property and PR industries. The world’s real estate is worth US$280.6 trillion: on average 3.5 times GDP and significantly more so in Europe, China / Hong Kong and North America. In the UK, the ...

I was delighted to contribute to Regulation of Extractive Industries: Community Engagement in the Arctic – a compilation of expert opinion on consultation and communication, edited by Rachael Lorna Johnstone & Anne Merrild Hansen and published this week. The book demonstrates how effective public participation is fundamental to the process of change brought about by ...

In countries such as the UK (which has eighty-nine percent digital saturation), online communication is increasingly used in public participation because of its accessibility: its ability to reach people at all times, with immediacy, through a variety of means: its ability to overcome language restrictions, access ‘hard to reach’ groups (particularly commuters, families with young ...

In 1969 the US communications academic Sherry Arnstein identified the terminology of consultation in her Ladder of Participation.  In some respects, Arnstein’s theory is a useful resource by which community involvement can be considered today. Arnstein’s Ladder was intended to reflect the relationship between community and government, identifying poorly-led participation as ‘manipulation’ on the bottom ...

Traditional forms of civic involvement have declined during the twenty-first century:  trades union membership has almost halved since the late 1970s and now comprises less than a quarter of the workforce.  Yet membership of special interest groups has increased substantially.  Nearly 4.5 million people, or one in 10 UK adults, is now a member or ...

In the property industry we are used to promoting bricks and mortar. This has the benefit of a geographical location and ‘milestones’ such as planning consent, public consultation events, ‘turf cutting’, and ‘topping out’. When promoting the attributes of a property consultancy – that is, the ability to provide property advice – we are rarely ...

The amount of data being produced each day is growing exponentially: according to Science Daily over the last two years alone 90 per cent of the current data in the world has been generated. Partly due to the ease of posting information online, the amount of content produced by property consultancies has increased considerably. A ...

The most significant change in PR so far in the 21st century is undoubtedly the online revolution.  As Emma Drake, founder of Henbe said so eloquently in the conclusion to Promoting Property:  insight, experience and best practice, ‘The use of technology has enabled us to understand our publics better, to understand how they think and ...

The rise of the ‘hyperlocal’ website is of critical importance to the planner, developer and local authority.  Not only do hyperlocal websites play an extremely constructive role in promoting and debating local issues, they have considerable campaigning potential and such warrant an understanding by the profession. The term ‘hyperlocal’, which originates from the US, describes ...

Protesting against the status quo, lobbying politicians, campaigning against organisations, cause-related fundraising and political campaigning have flourished in line with the accessibility of internet communications.  Whether to inform, to mobilize or to bring about direct action, the abundance of communication tactics now available enables anyone to run a powerful online campaign.  From local campaigns, such ...

A centuries’ old name is not enough to ensure success in centuries to come; neither is a decades’ old approach. I interviewed several PR directors of property consultancies for my book Promoting Property:  insight, experience and best practice and more than one of them commented that today’s environment is one of ‘adapt or die’: property ...