Community engagement on highways in Reading, UK
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The challenge
Reading Borough Council (UK) has ambitious plans to modernise its travel and transport infrastructure across the entire borough.
That's the vision set out in Reading's Transport Strategy 2036 – a comprehensive new plan, first drafted in 2019 and being put into action over the course of some 15 years. That vision – indeed, the entire Transport Strategy – was shaped in close collaboration with the residents of Reading. The Council ran a wide-reaching community engagement plan – including in-person events, drop-in sessions, school workshops and an online consultation – to get initial input from more than 3,500 people across the region.
But this wasn't a one-shot 'blink and you miss it' opportunity to give input on the plan. Reading Borough Council wanted to make sure that public feedback was permitted, encouraged, heard and incorporated into their thinking with each step they took.
The approach
After gathering initial input to the overall Transport Strategy, Reading produced a draft that was shaped by the comments they received. They then put this draft version back out for further community engagement, opening up a feedback survey to check their thinking with the public.
This final draft Strategy, produced in response to this extensive resident input, placed significant emphasis on the climate crisis and the need to find alternatives to the private car. In the 172 page document, the Council outlined general principles and specific measures they would pursue – including the introduction of emissions-based charging; myriad new cycle routes, storage and hire schemes; a requirement for all taxis to be electric or hybrid by 2028, and a new app-based 'Mobility as a Service' initiative.
The results
Since the overall Transport Strategy was approved, Reading have continued to engage their community with each stage of its rollout and implementation – such as, for instance, the allocation of an Active Travel Fund.
In 2021, the Council secured more than £1 million through the Government’s Active Travel Fund to help realise the plans set out in the Transport Strategy.
The funding would allow Reading to implement one – but only one – of four possible schemes to improve travel in different areas of the borough. So the Council reached out to residents again, inviting people to have their say on which of the schemes they'd most like to see implemented. They received almost 1,000 responses, with the input helping to steer their decision.
And, once the public had helped to identify a preferred scheme, the Council ran yet more consultation on the specific plans for that preferred scheme.
All of these community engagement activities were publicised online via the Council's Citizen Space platform. This meant that people could also participate immediately in the same place: exploring the background information and draft plans and giving their feedback digitally, all via Citizen Space.
From beginning to end, Reading Borough Council have sought to ensure their residents have a genuine opportunity to shape and steer their plans for travel in the borough. And they've continued to close the feedback loop, keeping participants informed about their decisions at each stage and extending further opportunities to inform the next round of developments. This creates a 'virtuous cycle' of community engagement, where people can easily see how to get involved, whilst building trust that their input is meaningful.
Reading’s ambitious new transport strategy has been developed over a number of phases of consultation. Included in it are attractive, reliable and affordable alternatives to the private car, which are key to tackling the climate emergency in Reading and meeting our net zero carbon target by 2030.
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.