The challenge
Oxford City Council is preparing a new Local Plan to guide the development of the city through to 2042, tackling some of its most pressing challenges: the delivery of affordable and social housing, climate resilience, heritage protection and sustainable economic growth. A Local Plan process of this scale and complexity does not happen in a single consultation. It requires sustained, structured engagement with residents, businesses, statutory consultees and community organisations across multiple stages, each with its own legal requirements, audiences and objectives.
The approach
Oxford City Council is using Citizen Space to manage the full Local Plan consultation journey from start to finish. Rather than treating each stage as a standalone exercise, Citizen Space provides a single, consistent platform through which residents and stakeholders can follow the plan's progress and participate at every stage.
The process began with an early engagement survey to identify the main issues facing the city, followed by the Regulation 18 Preferred Options consultation, the first of two statutory stages, where residents and organisations were invited to comment on the proposed policies. The Council is now running its Regulation 19 final draft consultation, the last opportunity for the public to have a say before the plan is examined by an independent Planning Inspector. Each stage has been published and managed through Citizen Space, with summary reports published on the same platform so residents can see how their feedback has been used.
Impact
By running the entire Local Plan process through Citizen Space, Oxford City Council has created a transparent, accessible and well-documented engagement journey that meets statutory requirements at every stage.
Key factors:
- A single platform managing multiple statutory consultation stages end to end
- Consistent, accessible experience for residents engaging across the full process
- Summary reports published directly on Citizen Space for full transparency
- Structured response collection supporting the legal and soundness requirements of the Local Plan examination process
- A clear, publicly visible timeline keeping communities informed of what comes next
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Delib is a govtech leader specialising in consultation and engagement, trusted by over 600 government organisations worldwide, including major planning projects. Since 2004, we've been building secure, accessible digital platforms to make participation simpler, fairer, and more inclusive. Our flagship product, Citizen Space, was built in collaboration with the UK government and has supported more than 11 million responses across over 110,000 democratic activities.