Something has shifted in the relationship between communities and the institutions that make decisions about the places they live. Trust in local government, national government, and large organisations is lower than it has been for decades. The 2024 OECD survey on public trust found that confidence in civic institutions has declined across most developed countries over the past ten years. In the UK, a Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology briefing published in 2025 found that ineffective public engagement risks further eroding the trust that remains.
At the same time, the decisions being made about places, about housing, regeneration, infrastructure, transport, have never been more consequential or more contested. Communities that feel overlooked, ignored, or consulted only in the most tokenistic sense, are increasingly vocal in their objection to change.
AR accessibility for sight loss – isolation, woman by window
And yet change, particularly the building of new homes and the regeneration of town centres, is urgently needed.
The tension between the need for development, and the distrust of the institutions driving it, is one of the defining challenges facing planners and developers in the UK right now. |
Division makes it harder, not easier, to cut corners
When social division is high and trust is low, the temptation for developers and local authorities is to streamline consultation; to do the minimum required, as efficiently as possible, and move on. This is understandable. It is also exactly the wrong response.
Communities that feel they have been genuinely listened to, whose concerns have been acknowledged and, where possible, addressed, are significantly more likely to accept outcomes they wouldn’t have chosen themselves. Communities that feel “processed through” a consultation exercise are more likely to object, appeal, and resist. The short-term saving of a reduced engagement programme is almost always outweighed by the long-term cost of opposition.
The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, introduced in July 2025, signals that the government understands this, thus placing community voice at the heart of new devolved governance structures. The Plan for Neighbourhoods programme is investing directly in neighbourhood boards and community engagement infrastructure. The direction of travel is towards more engagement, not less.
What good engagement looks like when trust is low
When communities are sceptical, engagement needs to be more transparent, more accessible, and more responsive; not just more frequent. People need to be able to see that their feedback has been heard and to understand what happened as a result of it. They need to encounter information about projects in contexts that feel natural and relevant, not in formats that feel bureaucratic and impenetrable.
Location-aware engagement is one part of the answer. Bringing information to where people are (rather than expecting them to seek it out) removes a barrier that is particularly high for communities that already feel disengaged from institutional processes. It doesn’t replace the deeper work of building trust. But it’s a good starting point.
AR accessibility for sight loss – old man and young man sharing phone information, in a park