Method of Approach Adopted for the Project
Workshop Programme
The above changes to the original brief to include wider stakeholder consultation, and the results of the first focus group meetings which showed the difficulties of engaging the general public in formalised professional studies, led to a revised approach to the second consultation stage. Our experience and that of other authorities and landscape practitioners showed that mixing members of the local community with well informed and articulate organisations and groups would put the local community at a disadvantage.
It was agreed that the local community would get the most benefit from a workshop, tailored to them, and that, given the demands on the time of professional representatives and the benefit of a written response, the stakeholders could be best consulted through distribution of a draft summary of the landscape character assessment, as described above. An exception was made in inviting local stakeholders to the workshop.