Community Engagement

Positive relationships with the community are essential for Estate owners, operating generational businesses with longevity at their heart.  Building and maintaining good connections with neighbours and other stakeholders creates trust, reduces the risk of opposition and makes life better for all concerned.

Long experience of helping Estate owners to engage with their communities has given the team at KOR a clear understanding of the value it can bring, especially in an era where it is all too easy for suspicion and resentment to be fuelled through word of mouth and online.

We can devise appropriate communication strategies for clients to ensure neighbours and other stakeholders of an Estate or landowner are kept informed of activities, invited to contribute feedback and provided with information about projects and other proposed changes as early as is practical.

Effective community engagement is, for many, a long-term commitment. While engagement at the point that a project is coming forward is important, it is generally good practice to have already built relationships well in advance of announcing change.

Project-specific engagement can include arranging events to bring forward details of a proposal and facilitate a two-way discussion on the plan. It can also mean building good relations with influential stakeholders whose opinions are trusted within a community.

More formally it can mean organising a Charrette - a public meeting bringing together members of a community to help devise a plan, for homes or other development, that is acceptable to the majority. 

KOR can assist with all forms of community engagement and has significant experience of supporting clients in planning and executing events.

We fully understand that some long-established family Estate owners have a natural inclination for modesty and the maintenance of a low-profile. It means engagement with the community can be daunting. 

We support our clients to make the process as smooth and effective as possible, keeping the engagement professional and businesslike and drawing a clear line between the public and the private.