LTC Community Impacts Consultation materials

3rd August 20213rd August 2021 Web Master

We all know that in the consultations so far the printed consultation materials usually consist of a consultation guide, a response form and freepost envelope. However, in the Community Impacts Consultation the packs were a lot more than most expected!

When you first receive a delivery of a large heavy box you may wonder what on earth it is, when you open the box you realise pretty fast that it is the latest consultation materials.

In each consultation material pack you get:

A Guide to Community Impacts Consultation
A response form and freepost envelope
Operations Update
Construction Update
You said, we did
One of the Ward Impacts Summaries (either South of the river, North of the river – part 1, or north of the river – part 2)

Highways England stated early on that printed copies would not be available until at least a week into the consultation period. They also commented about wanting to reduce costs and environmental impacts by limiting the printed copies.

So what do you get when you order printed copies and ask for a copy of each of the three ward impact summaries?

Some people may be interested to know what is going on in other wards not just where they live, maybe also where they work, or their children go to school, or they go shopping, or have family/friends etc.

Anyway, if you request all three ward impact summaries, you get three boxes like this:

We popped each box on the scales to get an idea of how much these boxes weigh, since everyone keeps saying about how large and heavy they are!

The box that contains the pack for South of the River weighs around 6kg
The box for North of the River – Part 1 weighs around 6kg
The box for North of the River – Part 2 weighs around 5kg.

That’s a total or around 17kg if you request a printed copy of the consultation materials including all three Ward Impact Summaries.

And what is inside those boxes?

As you can see you get 3 packs, but the only thing different in each one is which area the Ward Impacts Summary covers (marked with a red star in the image)

We’re not sure how HE can consider this cost effective or environmentally friendly!

We questioned HE on this, and they have now confirmed “if people would like to request a single copy of any of the documents rather than a full pack, or multiple copies of the response form and return envelope, they can call or email“.

At events

We have been told that at the events you need to ask for printed copies, they don’t seem to be as readily available as at previous consultations. It seems the days of grabbing a copy of the consultation guide and one or two response forms are gone, and are instead replaced with large heavy boxes of consultation materials.

We contacted HE about this and they have now confirmed that “the response forms are now available as separate documents at all of the events, including all of the consultation documents (as well as all three ward summaries)”

How many copies?

HE state that it is one per household. Whilst we obviously want to keep environmental impacts minimal it is important that people have access to the consultation materials they need to take part and have their say.

Not everyone is online. Even those who are online may need/want to review printed copies. Trying to view so much information online is hard work, and many find it much easier to read paper copies than on the screen. Some people only have online access via smaller screens such as phones etc that are again not great for viewing large documents and maps.

The fact is that these days multiple occupancy households are more common, and therefore limiting it to one per household does not seem right or fair. They have stated similar limits in previous consultations, but in the end provided copies when requested. It remains to be seen what stand they may or may not take this time around, although we have already heard of people being told they can only have one copy sent.

Again we have questioned HE on this, and their response was “if people would like to request a single copy of any of the documents rather than a full pack, or multiple copies of the response form and return envelope, they can call or email“.

Reminder

We would just take a moment to remind people though that you don’t have to use HE’s response form (either in printed or online format). You can write your own comments in your own words and submit it via email or post, just as long as it is sent via the official channels for responses. Email: LTC.CONSULTATION@TRAVERSE.LTD or post: FREEPOST LTC CONSULTATION (The freepost address is the only text needed on the envelope and no stamp is required.)

More info on taking part in the consultation can be found on our website here.