Every tool you need for effective public consultation
ConsultOnline brings together 21 powerful features into a single planning consultation software platform — purpose-built for UK councils, planning consultancies and community engagement teams. Stop juggling disconnected tools and manage your entire consultation lifecycle from one place.
Key features
Save time, reach more people and build stronger evidence
The features clients value most, and what each one does for your consultation. The groups below explain how they work.
Create a draft website from a Design and Access Statement
Upload the document and ConsultOnline extracts the key information and images to create a draft project website. Review it page by page, edit the content and check it against the original.
Guided administration, with video help throughout
Manage the consultation through a developer dashboard, with video guides explaining how to use the tools and complete each task.
Leaflets and hoardings created from the dashboard
Generate suitable text, imagery and designs, then use ConsultOnline’s print-and-post service or download print-ready files.
Evidence of genuine local participation
Personal registration codes on posted letters confirm that residents live at the address contacted. Reporting shows verified local voices and groups near-identical campaign responses.
Project videos without a separate production brief
Create videos from the developer dashboard, with live previews of each style, including narrated explainers.
A branded website with flexible management options
Present the consultation in the client’s branding, with a choice of managing it themselves or having the service managed for them.
Multilingual consultation
Translation options help residents understand the proposals and participate in their preferred language.
A public-facing chatbot trained on the project documents
Help visitors find information and answers about the proposals without requiring the project team to respond to every routine question.
An engaging virtual exhibition and image-led storyboard
Explain the proposals visually, with quick thumbs up or down responses and comments that make participation straightforward.
Quick polls, detailed surveys and a priorities tool
Offer different ways to participate, from a brief reaction to detailed feedback on what matters most locally.
Reporting that brings the evidence together
Bring together how people were reached, who participated, what they said and how the proposals responded, reducing time spent preparing the consultation report.
Create exhibition boards from the website content
Turn project information into consistent, branded boards for exhibitions and drop-in events, reducing duplicate design work.
Planning application tracking and construction updates
Keep the audience informed after consultation closes, through the application process and into construction, extending the website’s value and supporting community relations.
A ready-made social advertising kit
Create suitably sized images and tracked links for Facebook and Instagram, with reporting that connects promotion to consultation responses.
A presentation version of the consultation report
Generate branded slides of the findings, statistics and charts for project teams, boards and stakeholders, with potential applications for design review panels.
Presenting Your Proposal — portray your scheme positively and comprehensively, appealing to a broad audience
Bring your proposal to life with interactive maps, project news, videos, virtual exhibitions and a shared image and document library. Give residents a clear picture of the scheme and keep them informed as it develops. Feature availability varies by package and configuration.
Interactive maps and masterplans
Pin-drop spatial feedback on proposals with category filtering, comment threads and heatmap visualisation for planning applications.
News feed
Create project news stories and keep subscribers informed with email updates when news is published.
Videos provided
Use the developer dashboard to generate project videos from your consultation content, then preview and publish them on your website.
Virtual exhibitions
Present exhibition boards online so residents can explore your proposals in their own time. Support in-person events with tablet access and QR codes linking to your consultation.
Timeline and milestone tracker
Show project stages with colour coding, expandable details and countdown timers. Keep residents up to date with milestone reminders and optional email alerts.
Image and document library
Organise project images, plans and supporting documents in one place so residents can browse the proposals and download the information they need.
Notifications & alerts
Keep communities informed with automated email notifications, push alerts, subscriber management and consultation milestone updates.
Intelligent chatbot
An intelligent assistant that answers common questions about your consultation 24/7, guiding residents through proposals and reducing the burden on your team.
Engagement Tools — compelling and easy to use consultation tactics
Effective community engagement requires meeting people where they are — online, at exhibitions, through their letterbox and via intelligent chatbots that answer questions around the clock. ConsultOnline's engagement tools help you maximise participation and hear from groups who are typically underrepresented in planning consultations.
Interactive polls and surveys
Drag-and-drop survey builder with 11 question types, conditional logic and real-time response collection for public consultations.
Community discussion board
Give residents a moderated space to discuss proposals, share views and respond to each other, helping your team understand the issues that matter locally.
Storyboard
Guide residents through your proposals with a sequence of visual boards, combining images and explanations with opportunities to leave feedback.
Ideas wall
Invite residents to share suggestions and explore ideas from their community, bringing local knowledge into the consultation.
Interactive FAQs
Publish clear answers to common project questions in an easy-to-browse format and update them as new issues arise during consultation.
Ease of access — reach every resident, not just the loudest voices
Make it easier for more people to take part with postal outreach, multilingual content, accessible layouts and mobile-friendly consultation tools. Offer different routes to participation to suit your community.
Direct Mail
Generate and send personalised consultation letters to residents within a defined boundary. Integrated address lookup and mail-merge for physical outreach. Each letter can carry a personal code residents use to register.
Multi-lingual translation
Translate and publish consultation content in additional languages so more residents can understand the proposals and take part.
Accessibility & compliance
Designed to support WCAG 2.1 AA, with screen-reader support, keyboard navigation, high-contrast controls and easy-read formatting. Your published content and configuration remain part of the accessibility assessment.
Mobile & offline (PWA)
A progressive web app with responsive layouts. On supported browsers and devices, an opened survey can save response progress locally if the connection drops and sync later. Maps, documents, chat and other features may still require connectivity.
Analytics & reporting — turn consultation responses into actionable insight
Reduce manual coding of open-text responses. ConsultOnline can generate draft sentiment and theme analysis and assemble report content. Review automated analysis against the source responses before formal use or publication.
Real-time analytics
Live dashboards with automated sentiment analysis, demographic breakdowns, response trends and theme extraction across all consultation channels.
Reports & export
PDF reports with automated summaries, raw CSV exports and branded templates. Generation time depends on response volume, selected sections and analysis; review outputs before publication.
Management & compliance — stay organised, stay compliant
Manage stakeholder relationships, track engagement history and configure verification checks from one platform. Keep consultation records organised alongside the accessibility and data-management controls that support your team.
Stakeholder CRM
Manage stakeholder records, segment available contact data and review activity recorded in ConsultOnline. Coverage depends on channels, consent, integrations and imported data, so reconcile external activity before reporting.
User verification
Support consultee verification with Royal Mail PAF address validation and SMS checks. On Enhanced and Bespoke, direct mail letters can carry a personal code, so only households that received one can register. Available checks depend on project configuration.
Why ConsultOnline?
The public consultation platform built for how planning teams actually work
One platform, not a patchwork of tools
Consultation teams often use separate tools for surveys, mapping, email and contact management. ConsultOnline brings surveys, maps, CRM, notifications, analytics and reporting into one system. Responses recorded or imported into the platform can be reviewed together, reducing manual collation.
Purpose-built for UK planning consultations
ConsultOnline is not a generic survey tool adapted for planning. It was designed from the ground up for the specific needs of UK public consultation — from Statement of Community Involvement (SCI) compliance to Ordnance Survey map integration. The platform understands planning terminology, generates reports in formats that planning committees expect and structures data collection around the questions that planning officers actually need answered. Whether you are running a Regulation 18 Local Plan consultation or a pre-application engagement for a major development, the workflows are built in rather than bolted on.
Mobile-first with genuine offline support
ConsultOnline uses responsive, mobile-first layouts and progressive web app features. If connectivity drops while a resident is completing an opened survey, a supported browser can save the response locally and the platform will attempt to submit it when connectivity returns. No app-store download is required.
Physical and digital engagement, unified
Digital channels alone may not suit every audience. ConsultOnline supports in-person exhibition use, direct-mail workflows and QR codes that connect printed material to online surveys. Responses recorded in the platform, together with offline or postal responses that teams import or enter, can be reviewed in one workflow. Coverage depends on the completeness of those records, so reconcile source data before reporting.
21
Powerful features in one platform
3
Flexible consultation packages
AA
Designed for WCAG 2.1 AA
EU
European hosting and GDPR-supporting controls
Ready to modernise your consultations?
Join developers and planning consultancies across the UK who are using ConsultOnline to run more inclusive, data-driven public consultations. See how our consultation management system can transform your community engagement.