Glasgow City Council (GCC) recently held a public online consultation on energy on the GCC website. The main objective was to consult organisations across the city on the new Energy and Carbon Masterplan for Glasgow. Questions were asked on issues such as vision, CO2 reduction targets and the plan development process.
The survey was also placed on the ‘Community Hub’ of the GCC website to encourage participation by community groups and an invitation was sent to over 200 organisations from the public, private, academic and voluntary sectors to participate in the survey. Use was also made of social media as a tool to increase awareness of the survey and also to provide reminders of the closing date.
The response to the survey was very encouraging with over 125 organisations responding to the survey in full (over 55% response rate) and providing helpful comments. Nearly 90% of respondents agreed with Glasgow’s vision for sustainable energy and tackling climate change and almost half of the respondents agreed that Glasgow’s 30% CO2 reduction target by 2020 should be maintained. Many respondents are willing to share energy consumption data and also want to be involved in creating the new plan. About 80% of stakeholders responding wanted to be involved in the process of creating a new Energy and Carbon Masterplan for the city. Feedback was also gained on data that organisations would be willing to share and also how future communication on the emerging Plan should be delivered.
The high response rate and wide range of organisation type reached represents a successful stakeholder engagement exercise for Glasgow. The results and information provided are already helping to inform the new sustainable energy plan. Results of the survey will also act as a basis for developing further dialogue between the city council and the wide range of stakeholders across the city.
A summary of the results of Glasgow's stakeholder survey are available to view in this presentation:
Glasgow Stakeholder Survey Results - January 2014