Conference 2025 Programme

Dan Purchese , Director, Breakthrough Communications

Dan will explore how effective communication and meaningful community engagement are vital tools for shaping vibrant, resilient places. During this 15 minute talk he will share practical insights on how to harness strategic messaging, storytelling, and two-way dialogue to build trust, foster local identity, and empower communities to play an active role in shaping the future of their area.

Breakthrough Communications, who provide local councils with advice, support and guidance relating to council communications and community engagement, as well as for council data protection and Freedom of Information. Their experienced team is ready to help your council communicate effectively and compliantly with your community. 

Communications, community engagement and data protection services for parish and town councils

Breakthrough Communications’ community engagement services include creating communication and community engagement strategies, creating and managing neighbourhood plans and community surveys, and providing social media support and advice. They support councils with crisis communications situations. Breakthrough Communications data protection services include carrying out council-wide data map audits, data protection impact assessments, and creating and refreshing data protection policies and procedures.

Council Hive service for parish and town councils

Council Hive is a subscription service that empowers parish and town councils to communicate effectively and compliantly with their communities. Council Hive takes the stress out of local council communications and compliance, saving clerks and council officers time, effort and money. Council Hive provides Clerks and council officers access to expert communication and compliance advice, templates, resource packs, and masterclasses – all in one place. Discover more at https://breakthroughcomms.co.uk/hive.

Mark Tomkins, website accessibility & .gov.uk expert | Aubergine

In today’s connected world, “place” is no longer just physical — it’s also digital. This session explores how town and parish councils can lead in shaping both. From websites as digital town or village halls to the debut of Helen AI, a virtual assistant designed to support council clerks, attendees will see how embracing digital tools can enhance accessibility, transparency, and community engagement. Discover how modern councils can turn their websites into 24/7 community hubs — and how AI is making local governance smarter, not harder and help shape YOUR place.

Key Takeaways:

• Why accessible, well-designed websites are essential digital places
• How councils can use AI to save time and serve residents better
• A vision for digital place shaping that complements physical community building

Aubergine are one of the UK’s leading experts in providing fully compliant websites meeting both WCAG2.1AA (and WCAG2.2AA from October when the requirements change) alongside being authorised to register and manage.gov.uk domains.

We’re the official partner of SLCC for compliant websites and authors of the NALC Website Accessibility & Publishing Guidebook and are helping many parishes and towns migrate their websites over to a new, modern platform that’s easy to use, mobile friendly and fully compliant with Transparency Code and Accessibility requirements.

Full list of panellists to be published soon!

Cllr Jon Harvey, Town Councillor and former Mayor of Buckingham, will tell the story of how he came to write his family book “The Mayor’s Bear” and read a short extract. He will also outline how he is using the book to help get young people interested in community politics and one day becoming a local councillor. Jon will be selling and signing copies of the book at the conference in support of the new Buckingham Mayor’s Charities. More information (and how to order the book, if you wish) can be found here: https://themayorsbear.blogspot.com

Cllr Jon Harvey has been a Buckingham Town Councillor since 2011. In that time, he has chaired several committees and, like his colleagues on the council and in the Clerk’s team, he works hard to make Buckingham a welcoming and wonderful place for all to live, work, play, visit and study in. He was Town Mayor from 2017 to 2019. Professionally he has over 35 years’ experience in organisational change and transformation – advising, facilitating, coaching and opening space for creativity and innovation. In his personal life, Jon is a parent, grandfather, carer, campervanner and poet – currently walking The Great Ouse from its source to The Wash. Binding all this together is his ardent commitment to shaping a kinder, fairer and more sustainable world in which everyone gets to have the wherewithal to fulfil their dreams and ambitions.

Every local council wants the best outcomes for their community, but knowing what that might look like and how to deliver them, can be a challenging task. ONH’s Brendan Talk O’Neill discusses how their approach to an understanding of place can provide a starting point for identifying and delivering opportunities for positive change.

Profile: Brendan is an architect with over thirty years’ experience in the industry.

Before founding ONH he held senior positions in several high profile architectural practices and was responsible for a range of award winning projects across the cultural, residential and commercial sectors.

An early advocate of low energy and environmentally sensitive design he helped develop a new model for the design of office buildings before moving into the residential sector and the masterplanning of settlements.

His experience provides a depth of understanding of the commercial realities of the development world which is important in supporting ONH in its work with Town and Parish Councils helping them figure out how to respond to the opportunities and challenges of planning for change.

ONH: Planning for Good is a small social enterprise working across most of England. The team consists of planners, architects and urban designers. ONH’s team has a strong bond with its social mission: to enable community supported, high-quality and sustainable development, engaging successfully with local communities along the way.

Workshops 1, 2 and 3

• There will be three workshops running during the afternoon session. Each of these are for limited numbers of participants.
• All workshops are running simultaneously you must book onto your preferred workshop in advance of the conference using the links at the top of this page (right hand side).
• Bookings for the FREE workshops are only available to attendees of the conference with a valid event ticket.

Workshop 1 – Finding The Spatial Character of Place – with Tom Sykes, Common Works Architecture

During this workshop we will look at an example village /town and through maps and photos, participants will identify the elements that give it a unique character, and think about how these could guide future development, design guidance and neighbourhood plans.

This workshop is for people who want to get inside the process of understanding the way places evolve. By picking up pens and talking through drawing we’ll work through three micro workshops:

• Building a brief for a place shaping vision
• Analysing a place through maps and photographs
• Using this to imagine the future

Over the hour there will be a mix of tools & techniques, opportunities to make a mess & try things out, and a chance to understand the ways different stakeholders can come together around place shaping.

Led by: Tom Sykes, Director, Common Works Architecture & Mel Woof CEO BMKALC

Workshop 2 – Partnership working between diverse stakeholders – with Will Rysdale MKCC and Delia Shephard Bletchley & Fenny Stratford Town Council

During this workshop we will explore the process and challenges of capturing ideas and ambitions from multiple stakeholders, whilst managing their expectations and ultimately delivering an outline project true to the original sentiments which can be delivered.

Led by: Will Rysdale Head of Housing Delivery and Regeneration, MKCC and Delia Shephard, Clerk, Bletchley & Fenny Stratford Town Council

Workshop 3 –

Spatial Settlement Planning: from Pressure to Prosperity – with Brendan O’Neill, Director, ONH: Planning for Good and Louise Stubbs, former Deputy Town Clerk of Buckingham Town Council, now Business Development & Projects Manager, ONH: Planning for Good

A three stage workshop covering:

Understanding place and pressures for change in your area:

• Identify and discuss national changes that are impacting on planned and speculative development in all areas across the country. Internal and external pressures are pushing a drive to deliver more homes. (Examples, Green Belt/Grey Belt for South Bucks)
• Interactive activity to identify the local challenges the attendees in the room are facing.

Engagement and opportunities:

• What does the community need? What are other drivers for change in the area? How do you move past the least-worst sites approach of a local plan HELAA assessment and identify positive possibilities for change?
• Interactive activity about ways to engage with landowners and the community.

Making choices: how to deliver the change

• What happens next? Options beyond neighbourhood plans, including co-development and representations for the emerging local plans.
• Interactive activity about choosing between options and community involvement.

Q&A

If the number is 1.5 million homes, how can we also hold on to these as individual places where full lives happen?  Where communities grow?  That add to our culture?  The homes where our memories are made?

Through illustrations Tom will talk about different approaches to making new homes that put the social life of places first.  Moving between well tested and grounded examples to innovative and idealistic possibilities there will be ways of adding quality to every situation.

Tom Sykes, founding director, Common Works Architecture

‘Tom inspires people to understand the value and possibilities of design.  He brings it to life by showing what it can give to a project – its long standing impact, and the role we all have in shaping that’

At Common Works we design projects for the common good, using architecture to build community and spark a sense of connection.  This could mean new housing built around a courtyard to turning derelict railway arches into affordable workspaces, helping a community compost group unlock a site, upgrading a town council office into a working hub with communities at its heart or retrofitting a learning kitchen into a museum.

Director Tom has previously held leadership roles in client side organisations, building up a particular understanding of development and design, grounding the aspirational work of the practice into realisable and realistic projects.  Setting up the practice creates the opportunity to share this client side knowledge, supporting community organisations and public sector clients to shape better places – places that put people first.

Advocacy

Tom is an Expert for the Design Council, a Public Practice Alumni, a training lead at Urban Design Learning, sits on several Design Review Panels and teaches at the Welsh School of Architecture.

www.common-works.co.uk 

Contact: 

ts@common-works.co.uk