Customer story: East Sussex County Council, UK

A good process in search of good tools

East Sussex County Council had a well-established internal process for consultation – but the team were frustrated with the unwieldy software required to take their activity online.

The Council had established a comprehensive and effective 8 step process for running consultations. This was tried, tested and popular with staff who operated it.

However, the Council's tools for online consultation were proving frustrating and inefficient. They set out to find a more up-to-date, user-friendly platform that was geared towards online public consultation.

East Sussex County Council chose to use Citizen Space

Citizen Space is cloud-based software for managing your public involvement activity in one place.

After carefully considering several different options, East Sussex opted to switch to Citizen Space for their online consultation – citing its ease of use and flexibility as key reasons behind the decision.

Citizen Space has since been adopted quickly and seamlessly across the Council. The platform complements existing consultation processes and any individual in the organisation who needs to run a consultation can easily approach their dedicated team for advice on how the platform works, enabling effective collaboration.

Less frustration, more consultation

Since switching to Citizen Space, the Council has noted a marked decrease in the number of help requests from colleagues setting up consultations. They have also made extensive use of features like the ability to clone surveys, allowing them to quickly roll out a large number of high quality consultations. For example, the Council used Citizen Space to coordinate the annual 'safer schools' survey, which receives some 10,000+ responses.

The platform's usability and integration with the Council's existing processes saved them a huge amount of time – and headaches. As Sue Buxton, East Sussex's Consultation and Engagement Manager, put it: 'Citizen Space can be set up in such a way that it almost runs itself'.