A faster planning system needs better intelligence
The reform of infrastructure planning brought about by the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 has changed the terms of the debate around engagement.
For years, project teams have operated within a largely prescribed process based on the Planning Act 2008. Consultation programmes were designed around statutory stages, defined requirements and extensive documentation. This created certainty, but it did not always create better engagement.
The new approach gives developers greater flexibility. The statutory requirement for pre-application consultation on Development Consent Order (DCO) applications has been removed, while government guidance continues to recommend consultation and engagement as a way to identify issues, improve project design and reduce uncertainty. This creates flexibility, but it also presents a challenge.
Without a prescribed process to follow, project teams must make more deliberate choices about who they engage, when they engage them and what they do with the resulting insight. The question is no longer simply whether a project has consulted. It is whether the project understands its stakeholders and communities well enough to make the right decisions.
From consultation data to community intelligence
Major projects already generate extensive information. There are stakeholder meetings, consultation responses, correspondence, survey results, social media discourse, political developments, digital analytics and records of earlier engagement. There may also be valuable experience from previous projects in the same sector or location.
The problem is rarely an absence of information. The problem is that the information is fragmented, interpreted inconsistently or considered too late to influence the project.
A consultation report may explain what respondents said during one defined period. A stakeholder database may record who attended a meeting. A digital dashboard may show which content generated interest. A project team may understand the political context. Each is useful, but individually they do not show the whole picture.
Community intelligence comes from connecting them. It means combining evidence about people, places, issues and previous interactions to build a clearer understanding of what matters, where views are changing and what could affect delivery.
It also requires professional judgement. Data can reveal a pattern, but an experienced consultant must determine what that pattern means for the project and how the project should respond.
Why this matters now
A faster and more flexible planning system places greater responsibility on project teams. They must decide what level of engagement is appropriate, demonstrate that important issues have been recognised and show how stakeholder input has informed project development. Working out what is a proportionate level of activity, as suggested by guidance, is key to finding a balance that can meaningfully progress a project.
The standard should be whether engagement has created useful intelligence and enabled better decisions. That means moving beyond measures such as the number of events held, responses received or newsletters distributed. Those measures may describe activity, but they do not necessarily demonstrate understanding or impact.
More useful questions include:
- Which concerns could materially affect the project?
- Are the same issues appearing across different communities or stakeholder groups?
- What have we learned that should influence design, communications or delivery?
- Where are there gaps in our understanding?
- Can we demonstrate how engagement influenced a decision?
These are questions of intelligence, not simply of process.
Introducing Communify Intelligence
This is the thinking behind Communify Intelligence.
Communify Intelligence is Copper’s approach to combining AI-assisted analysis, project information and human expertise. It helps teams turn information into actionable intelligence, enabling better stakeholder understanding, more effective engagement and more confident decision-making.
It can support teams to:
- build more useful stakeholder briefings
- identify gaps in existing intelligence
- stress-test engagement and communications strategies
- quickly analyse large volumes of consultation feedback
- monitor recurring and emerging issues
- prepare for difficult conversations
- produce clearer evidence for decisions and reporting.
The purpose is not to automate relationships or replace professional judgement. It is to give experienced project teams a more complete and timely view of the environment in which they are operating. It is effectively like having an additional advisor in the room.
Used well, technology can process information, identify patterns and challenge whether important evidence is missing. Consultants and project leaders must then interpret that information, understand its significance and decide what to do.
Better intelligence supports faster delivery
Engagement is sometimes presented as an obstacle to faster infrastructure delivery. This is certainly true if engagement is not planned and designed as part of an ongoing campaign to support all strands of a communications. However, identifying major concerns late, misunderstanding local circumstances or failing to recognise political and reputational risk can create much greater delay.
Communify Intelligence has been developed to help projects reach that position sooner. Understanding communities and stakeholders earlier, focusing effort where it matters and making decisions with greater confidence. It has also been designed to drive effective face-to-face contact and engagement – at the right time and with the right people – and to prepare projects teams to draw the most project benefit from these encounters.
A faster planning system will require more than procedural reform. It will require smarter engagement, stronger judgement and far better use of what projects already know.
That is the role of Communify Intelligence: helping project teams transform information into insight, insight into action and action into better project outcomes.
Explore what’s possible.
Book a discovery call today. Contact Andrew Weaver (andrew.weaver@copperconsultancy.com) or the Communify Intelligence team (communifyintelligence@copperconsultancy.com).
Or download the Communify Intelligence brochure and learn more about the tools here: Data and Insight