The Civic Trust was the first to establish the inclusion of local opinion into the assessing process and the local advisor is equally as important as all of the other members of the assessment teams.
The Local Advisor should be someone who is not qualified in architecture, planning or the Built Environment related subjects, but who has a passion about their locality.
The Local Advisor is responsible for canvassing the local community for its collective opinion of the scheme entered into the Awards. The community for each scheme differs; it can be the scheme users, the people who pass it daily or simply people on the street.
Canvassing for opinions can take several forms, some local assessors like the clip board approach, where they simply stop people on the street or knock on doors, other assessors like to speak to the Civic Society and gain opinions or some like to put an article in the paper with an email address to request people email into to give their opinions, the methods are many and varied. But the end result is the same, on the day of assessing the Local Advisor needs to come to the day with a clear idea of what the locals think of the scheme.
Civic Societies are a useful source of help. Details of the main contact point will be provided with the details of your assessment team. It is ideal that you should contact your local Civic Society and the assessment team to touch base and inform them that you are the Local Advisor.
If you would like to volunteer for the scheme as a Community Advisor please please click here to inform us.
