Southampton City Council faced a familiar challenge: the local community wasn't engaging with planning consultations. Long PDFs, static maps and technical language kept people at arm's length from the decisions shaping their city. The council saw an opportunity to change that. In partnership with VU.CITY, and Konveio, a global digital engagement specialist, Southampton built something new: an interactive 3D webmap where residents could explore proposals, understand context and leave location-specific feedback, all in one intuitive experience.
Traditional formats such as PDFs, surveys and town hall meetings have long struggled to reach modern audiences. Southampton City Council saw an opportunity to change that. "Public engagement is a critical part of the plan-making process, not only to be transparent about plans and enable people to have their say, but to ensure it is as accessible as possible,” said Amber Trueman, Planning Transformation Programme Lead at Southampton City Council. "Good consultation helps build trust. Digital can help this process, enabling visualisation, ease of navigation and a more fun and engaging environment which can help increase and diversify the reach." The council wanted to move beyond static documents and dense jargon to create something people could see, use and truly understand.
As Southampton began developing its new Local Plan, the council made a strategic choice: to create a consultation model that not only met the government's emerging standards for digital local plans but set a new benchmark for what digital engagement could be.
"As we develop our new Local Plan, we are keen to ensure that what we do now will fully meet and go beyond the new requirements for digital Local Plans," said Helen Owens from Southampton City Council. "This tool will allow for higher-quality sharing of information, even beyond the Local Plan, ensuring it is interactive and easy to navigate."
The vision was clear: to build a platform where residents could see their city in 3D, explore the places that matter to them, and leave feedback anchored to precise locations and viewpoints.
Southampton partnered with VU.CITY to provide the 3D spatial foundation, and with Konveio to layer in engagement and comment management. The integrated platform lets residents explore proposed developments in 3D, click on areas of interest, and leave location-specific feedback, all within an intuitive, immersive environment.
Behind the scenes, it's sophisticated. On the surface, it's simple. "This tool allows residents to explore plans in 3D, click on policies, and send feedback directly. It's intuitive, visual, and future-ready," said Amber Trueman. VU.CITY's Tom Maughan explained the approach: "We took a mobile-first approach, designing the feature set to work on the smallest of devices, then ensuring the web UI scaled fully to a desktop website experience."
The result? Three platforms working as one seamless experience.
"By integrating Konveio's engagement tools with the VU.CITY Webmap Viewer, Southampton City Council can now collect feedback anchored in a 3D spatial context," said the Konveio team. "When users click on a parcel or land use, their comments are tied directly to that exact location and viewpoint in 3D." This fundamentally changed what feedback means. Instead of abstract comments, planners now receive insights grounded in space, tied to real locations and perspectives.
Before the webmap, Southampton's "Call for Sites" process relied on emails, letters and online forms. Each submission included a location plan, but context was hard to see. Planners had to piece together scattered documents, making it difficult to visualise how sites related to one another or to the wider city. The webmap brought everything into one place: clear, spatial and easy to understand.
Now residents nominate sites directly on the map. They click on the relevant parcel, describe it from their perspective, and leave their submission pinned to a precise 3D viewpoint. Context isn't added later, it's built in from the start.
"In the Southampton 'Call for Sites' context, this meant that residents and stakeholders could nominate sites via an interactive map, point to exactly their parcels, and leave submissions tied to those places, enabling more productive, actionable input," said Chris Haller from Konveio. The effect is significant. Feedback no longer arrives as abstract opinion. It arrives grounded in place. That spatial precision uncovers patterns that text-only submissions can't reveal. "Coupling that spatially precise feedback with Konveio's analytics allows planners to see patterns in what kinds of views, which parcels, or which vantage points are attracting concern, praise or suggestions. It helps identify zones of visual sensitivity, or land-use trade-offs in a way that is grounded in how people are seeing the city, not just what they abstractly think."
Site nominations that once took weeks to synthesise now make sense within days. Better decisions. Faster timelines. Evidence instead of guesswork.
The webmap has replaced Southampton's previous consultation platforms and is becoming the standard for local plan engagement. The 2025 Call for Sites consultation proved the concept worked, not just technically, but in terms of real community participation.
1. For residents: The barriers that once kept people out of planning are gone. No dense PDFs. No abstract maps. Instead, residents explore proposals in 3D, focus on the areas that matter to them, and share feedback directly within the map.
The results speak for themselves: 25 residents submitted sites during the 2025 consultation. This was the first time Southampton has seen active engagement from this demographic. Previously, "Call for Sites" consultations drew responses almost exclusively from developers, landowners and agents. The webmap changed that.
"Whilst we have only tested the new technology on a 'Call for Sites' consultation, so far we have seen a significant increase in members of the public getting involved," said the Southampton planning team.
"Previously this type of consultation would only draw the attention of developers, landowners and agents. However, often it is local residents who notice when land or buildings are not being used and can suggest how they could be developed. This is exactly what has been happening. People will be able to navigate planning proposals geographically, find what's important to them, and comment directly. Konveio will dramatically improve accessibility to our larger documents, making everything easier to search, navigate, and respond to." Amber Trueman, Southampton City Council
2. For planners: Feedback now arrives with spatial context embedded. Instead of interpreting abstract opinions, planners receive observations tied to exact locations and viewpoints, grounded in how residents actually experience their city. In the 2025 Call for Sites round, submissions doubled to 50 sites (compared to roughly 25 in previous rounds). More importantly, the quality of submissions improved. Each one came with precise location data, visual context, and clear reasoning. This made the assessment process faster and more evidence-based.
3. For the organisation: The system is designed to grow seamlessly. Council teams manage and expand their own data, applying the platform across consultations and projects. What started as a Local Plan tool can evolve into a shared digital asset for the whole authority. The digital campaign supporting the consultation reached 236,405 people through social media, generating 446 engagements and 387 link clicks. Even more telling: public sentiment shifted from mixed to mostly positive as the consultation progressed. This was a sign that the tool itself was building trust.
"I'm super proud to provide an experience that empowers the general public to better understand their local built environment and policies via an intuitive, accurate webmap. It's groundbreaking for those end users." Tom Maughan, VU.CITY.
Southampton's webmap isn't a one-off, it's success has cemented the foundation for a new way of working. "We continue to work with VU.CITY and Konveio to improve the product," said Helen Owens. "We hope that in future our 3D webmap will replace our existing mapping system for the Local Plan, and in time could be a solution for the entire organisation."
The model is already attracting attention. Other local authorities are exploring how to replicate Southampton's approach. The question is no longer whether councils should adopt 3D engagement tools, but rather, how quickly they can make them part of everyday planning.
For local authorities ready to reimagine consultation, Southampton offers a clear blueprint: start with user needs, prioritise accessibility, connect your tools, and listen to what residents truly care about.
The outcome isn’t just better consultation.
It’s better planning.
It’s better cities.
See how your council could reimagine public consultation.