In June 2025, Waverley Borough Council commissioned CAG to design and facilitate a series of stakeholder engagement workshops relating to the preparation of their Local Plan.

Objectives

The purpose of the workshops was to:

• Engage local communities early in the Local Plan process to gather input on local issues, ambitions, and development pressures.

• Raise awareness of challenges within the Local Plan process, including meeting the government’s increased Local Housing Need.

• Understand stakeholders’ views on what makes Waverley special as well as desired changes and concerns.

• Shape the Local Plan’s priorities and vision with local distinctiveness in mind.

Our approach

Four highly interactive workshops were held – two online (one for councillors and one for the general public) and two in person, in different towns within the borough. Workshops involved a mixture of presentations and activities. Online workshops included the use of Mentimeter to gather plenary input plus smaller facilitated breakouts, with facilitators capturing discussions on Miro boards. In person sessions included table discussions with post-it notes and prioritisation exercises using sticky dots.

Outcomes

A total of 110 people took part, with 18 members at the initial online workshop, 64 participants split across the two in-person workshops, and 28 participants at the final online workshop.

CAG pulled together a report setting out all the outputs from the workshops with a high level summary, with a draft provided to the client within a week of the final workshop.

Feedback about the workshops was predominantly very positive. A few participants at the first workshop struggled to access one of the online participation tools and this was made simpler for the second online workshop. Comments included:

“Good session. Nice to be interactive. Thanks.” “Well-structured event. Felt able to fully participate.” “Very good workshop, well presented, organised and run.”

If you would like to talk to CAG about how we can support your organisation with stakeholder engagement, please contact Emma Jones – ej@cagconsult.co.uk