Engage Liverpool.
Engage Liverpool is a landmark, one of its kind UK organisation concept that is leading the way in citizen-led decision making, empowering every day residents to directly take on and deal with issues they previously could not have.
Engage connects government, residents, managing agents, landlords and business, and seeks to help residents establish a better and more sustainable city living environment.
It is supported by Liverpool City Council and neighbourhood investor Plus Dane, but is resident owned and led. Its board of directors and advisors include the city's most senior politicians and council officers. Its conference speakers regularly include Louise Ellman MP, senior representatives from ARMA, LEASE and other national organisations. In short, it's an organisation that commands respect.
Tailored by Reddbridge Media, the Engage website - launched in June 2010 - is no mere vanity showcasing brochure, but is the engine that drives the powerhouse organisation that joins together the 25,000 central area residents, the city council, and more. The remit of the website is to:
- Provide private areas where residents of city centre and waterfront buildings can 'meet'.
- Host discussions online, and be flexible to meet future needs as well as today's requirements.
- Not be monolithic, but be a melding pot of Engage events, offerings, communications methods..
- Give stakeholders access to these discussions, to connect residents and council together.
- Provide an outlet for city centre and waterfront news (including emergency announcements).
- Give the Engage organisation a public voice and help Engage (as a small organisation) run efficiently.
Already Engage has over 20 city centre and waterfront buildings online where residents have stepped forward to say 'I want to be involved'. Through a system of 'devolved responsibility' that recognises the voluntary, limited in number Engage staff count, these residents can liaise safely with their neighbours (including with some residents in other buildings) to come together to discuss their common issues and find solutions.
Why are people getting involved with Engage?
The success of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have proven that many people want to be 'social'. Amid a living environment traditionally associated with privacy and little neighbour contact, Engage has questioned whether that is a feature people desire, or a consequence of living space, and given people the tools to change this where they want to.
People are beginning to recognise that for many of their problems there is no official 'cure'. For all central government talk of excessive state legislation and involvement, vast swathes of leasehold law - particularly relevant to the modern, inner-urban living landscape - are either grossly unregulated, or regulated with poor quality legislation. People are having to do things for themselves.
Councils and other service providers are facing more and more pressure for ever higher quality output. Sometimes it may be the case that these services are much enhanced by resident participation, in other cases residents can be best placed to provide solutions for themselves.
In short, the Engage platform offers residents a means to make contact with others, so that they don't have to act alone. It enables them collectively to take on issues they normally could not, to enhanced result. From the authority perspective, it offers the prospect of enhanced service delivery at a reduced cost and burden.
Who benefits from Engage?
Stakeholders, such as the city council
- By enabling residents to take on their own problems, a resident-empowering longer term shift in perception of the city council as a partner to deal with issues - rather than a magic bullet for all ills - has begun, with residents taking more responsibility.
- The nature of our new urban neighbourhoods means that it can be difficult for city officials to gain access to buildings, or learn about the environments inside. Engage opens these neighbourhoods up, and brings residents and council together.
- Residents can update key data about their building that is traditionally difficult for authorities to gather (buildings facilities, managing agent details, etc). This information can be useful in many purposes, but not least of all when it is necessary to communicate with residents/managing agents based either on circumstance or criteria. While still fully respecting the privacy rights of residents, Engage and its stakeholders can:
- Send mass communications to residents within an area of the city based on certain criteria (ie. recycling facilities, or absence thereof).
- Send important communications out to members of the site through a simplified 'emergency communications system', whether that be to the entire city centre, or just members of an individual building.
- Find buildings by managing agent.
- Start discussions and consultations either inside building areas or generally, and ask people to take part.
- Stakeholder involvement is not limited to organisation nor department - new accounts can be added according to need. Over time there will be account holders in the Fire service, Police, Coastguard and others, all able to take advantage of a direct connection to the city's residential core.
- Through the multi-purpose use of the site, stakeholders are also using it for their own internal organisational needs, creating efficiencies and new ways of involving residents in improving services.
- Stakeholders can communicate with and involve residents much more, while at the same time actually reducing costs. Individual departments inside the city council can contact residents in a highly localised way that is both immediate and effective and zero cost in terms of delivery.
Residents
- From issues with rogue Managing Agents, through to neighbourhood cleanliness, residents in Liverpool are getting together and doing something about their lot directly.
- Over time, powered by a can-do approach, residents will become less and less likely to sit in isolated silence, but will get together and deal with matters head on, to the benefit of themselves and their environment.
- Connecting people in a community can be social, and help engender happier living environments.
- Creating a better and deeper awareness of their surrounding communities can help residents to deter and reduce crime.
- Residents can receive quick, efficient and relevant messages from stakeholders.
- In many cases, where the city council may have been the resident's first port of call (and often as a last resort), now they have an always accessible FIRST port of call they can turn to when issues are at an early stage.
Managing agents
- Dealing with managing agents was undoubtedly one of the key triggers for Engage's formation, but it's easy to forget there are good ones, as well as poor ones.
- By bringing residents together, Engage is increasing demand for these good managing agents, and providing the know-how, backup and support network necessary to enable residents to effect change.
- Engage is forming a managing agents kitemark scheme to support this further. The website will provide the ideal forum to capture people's ideas, thoughts and concepts for this landmark resident-led kitemarking, and managing agents will be able to join in this discussion directly. None of this would be feasible without Engage and its connection to residents.
- Where managing agents reach the grade to become kitemarked, it opens the door to them being classed as 'stakeholders' themselves, and all the benefits and cost savings that could bring.
What's involved in achieving this level of community interaction?
Engage is a voluntary organisation, with no paid employees. Its activities are supported by Liverpool City Council and Plus Dane, but it aims to gather more and more funding from private investment.
Its website is powered by a bespoke built content management system, built around the needs of the Engage organisation and with their limited funding streams in mind. Features:
- Reliable open source technologies for minimal ongoing cost / servicing costs.
- Flexible, well-powered but cost-efficient hosting solution.
- A flexible, user-managed, web-structure - whole sections of the site can be added or removed at will.
- A flexible content structure - discussions, video, pictures, and more can be user-deployed throughout the site.
- Flexible workflow routes, so that workload can be distributed and dispersed.
- Internal messaging system, including emergency announcements.
- Delivered on time.
- Zero overspend - guaranteed with any Reddbridge project.
Of course, technological deployment is only part of any successful project delivery. This project began with many long discussions, consultations with residents themselves, review meetings, and monthly Engage project meetings (which are still attended, post delivery). Engage didn't just gain a website, they also gained a working partner.
Interested in learning more?
I hope so. I believe that Engage is major step forward in local democracy and enabling people to make their own communities better places. I'm proud that my company has had the opportunity to give it the tools and guidance to do so.
If you would like to know more - whether about starting something like this in your own city, or just to talk generally about how appropriate media and social media solutions can help increase accessibility, address issues and reduce burdens - then I'd be very pleased to hear from you.