Customer story: Scottish Borders Council, UK

A new approach

The Scottish Borders Council wanted to revitalise their consultation approach.

They had existing consultation processes in place, but found they weren’t getting as much engagement as they hoped for. They wanted to bring their consultation activity primarily online and needed the best tool for the job.

They decided to opt for Citizen Space. With its central, unified hub, all of their consultation activity could now be in one convenient place online, which in turn could increase response levels. They bought it in 2017, in the wake of GDPR legislation coming in to force, and the tool’s built-in data compliance features put them at ease, knowing that all data that went through it would be safe and secure.

More than just consultations

It suited their needs in other ways as well. As well as running public consultations through the platform, they use it internally, too. Citizen Space allows site admins to create private surveys, which can be used to consult with specific audiences (like internal staff or stakeholders), rather than the wider public. This meant that they didn’t need to run internal surveys on a separate platform, and that site admins were aware of all internal and public engagement at any given time.

Plenty of features

Scottish Borders Council have made use of the many features Citizen Space offers, including ‘skip logic’, which routes respondents through the questions that are relevant to them only. This meant that they could essentially combine two or more surveys into one: for example, rather than asking for attendee feedback about two events on separate surveys, they could combine the two and minimise the workload. This helped further consolidate all their activity and improved ease of access for respondents.

Altogether, Citizen Space helped bring their consultation activity to a level in line with the SBC’s ‘Fit for 2024’ programme, aimed at making the Council more adaptable, efficient and effective in the age of the internet.