When we began talking to people in Stranraer about the Place Plan and invited them to be part of the conversation, locals told us they’d rather be able to vote online than turn up at meetings.
We listened.
We made a bid to the Community Led Vision Fund to create a digital alternative – online voting.
We secured funding.
We found a platform called Citizen Space and we’ve developed it for Stranraer to trial for a year.
When the Place Plan went out to consultation on 1 June 2023, this was our first test for whether online voting worked.
We were delighted to immediately get 150 responses and even more delighted to see they came evenly across all age groups. This is what the pie chart shows… voting by age group … under 21s, over 71s and then by decade.
We know meetings tend to attract older people, so digital voting helps get the balance right.
Keep using Citizen Space this year so we can find out if it’s worth investing in. We think the Council could use this right across the region.