Croydon Council is planning the digital future of the borough and wants to hear the views of residents and businesses in Croydon.
The ideas shared via this website will be brought together in a new digital strategy for Croydon, to be published in July 2019.
The Council is starting with open questions to get views on three big main topics – Digital Services, Digital Borough, Digital Council.
Croydon Council website image
As the draft strategy takes shape, they’ll also share their work in progress, for further feedback.
All details here. You can not only give your views on the three areas but also see what others have had to say!
We asked the following questions in late May and received the following from the Council officer:
Q: What is the closing date for residents and businesses to submit views? This isn’t clear.
A: This is an ongoing consultation.
There is currently a draft of the strategy available for comment at https://strategy.croydon.digital/draft.
We will keep this draft open for comments for 2 weeks. Any comments on the text and new ideas received by Monday 24 June will be taken into account as we finalise the strategy, before it is published in late June with the papers for the next council Cabinet Meeting on July 8. However, we’ll continue to be open to feedback all the time. Once the strategy is live, we’ll be sharing the details of our work on a public roadmap and will keep using this blog to be open about our progress and plans.
Q: If a report will be produced in July, this seems a very narrow window to gather views. Has this really been open for views since the end of March, as per the date the embedded video was uploaded?
A: The consultation has been open since 1st April 2019
Q: Will this strategy have any bearing on the digital offer in libraries? If so, shouldn’t it be advertised in libraries and to library users? Committee collected info and flyers from several Croydon libraries and other sites in Croydon for our public meeting last week but no one found details of this consultation.
A: We have been engaging with our libraries service to take into account their finding around our customer’s needs, and have also done face to face consultation in Croydon central library.
Q: How is the Council engaging the views of those not online, who will clearly be affected by any digital strategy? Although we have a large social media following and list of contacts on Eventbrite, we always distribute leaflets to catch those not online.
A: We have been doing face to face engagement in the Whitgift centre, Access Croydon, New Addington market and Croydon library in order to reach a wide range of audience, and in particular those who may not be online.
We have offered to host a meeting on this subject if the Council would find this useful and have offered to advertise details of face to face engagement exercises too.
