OpusConsult is a comprehensive digital solution tailored for Local Development Plan consultations and other planning policy public engagement activities. It simplifies planning policy management, enhances productivity, and reduces costs, empowering Local Planning Authorities to drive meaningful public engagement and informed decision-making.
OpusConsult is an intuitive, accessible platform designed to broaden participation in consultations, particularly among traditionally hard-to-reach groups. By streamlining processes and encouraging greater public input, OpusConsult facilitates the creation of well-informed and inclusive Local Plans.
The platform reduces resource-intensive processes for councils, offering digital tools to manage every aspect of plan-making:
From evidence gathering and plan drafting to examination and adopted plan publication, OpusConsult covers it all, ensuring efficiency, compliance, and a seamless experience.
Users can submit representations against specific sections, such as headers, policies, or maps, saving time and effort during analysis and reporting.
Offline submissions can also be uploaded effortlessly.
OpusConsult provides instant access to data insights, supporting Local Planning Authorities in making informed decisions.
Customisable reports and statistics produce the evidence needed for Planning Inspectorate submissions.
The public interface is intuitive and accessible, encouraging participation from diverse groups.
When we convert your documents into HTML format, this ensures the content is web accessible and mobile-friendly, adhering to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2.
Enhance engagement and consultations with features designed for polls, surveys and questionnaires.
Our customisable interactive Virtual Exhibition Rooms are also ideal to showcase proposals in a visually appealing and engaging format, broaden reach and increase Local Development Plan engagement.
OpusConsult includes tools for running and analysing Call for Sites consultations. Features like custom data capture forms and automated follow-up questions make data collection easier.
An optional interactive mapping tool enables efficient site submissions and assessments, improving collaboration and saving time for all involved.
OpusConsult integrates with most mapping systems, including OpusMap from our well-established partners at Blue Fox Technology. The OpusMap integration with OpusConsult, allows users to create and link interactive maps, capture site polygons, and query constraints instantly.
Many councils upgrade to The Opus System to benefit from mapping capabilities, ideal for presenting an interactive policies map with documents, and to streamline site submissions and assessments.
OpusConsult offers exceptional value with its straightforward and affordable SaaS licensing model, suitable even for the smallest councils. Making lighter work for council procurement teams, JDi Solutions is an approved HM Government G-Cloud supplier of OpusConsult.
Continuous software updates, included at no extra cost, ensure the platform evolves with technology advancements, regulatory changes and customer needs.
The council-branded OpusConsult platform, complete with logo and theme styling, can be up and running in days. The onboarding process includes comprehensive training and ongoing support from a dedicated team.
The secure OpusConsult platform serves as a central hub for public consultations.
Councils can opt to upgrade to a custom-built dedicated Local Plan Engagement Website with a Drupal CMS for centralised management of proposals, policies, maps, and updates. The Drupal CMS enables self-management of web-accessible document publication and content updates in real-time.
Our OC2Connect integration solution ensures submissions via a dedicated Local Plan website are centralised in OpusConsult for efficient processing.
The experience we've had working with JDi on the preparation of the Local Plan has been very positive. The product they have in OpusConsult provides a very effective way to manage documents, comments, and responses during consultations. The support received has always been quick, with queries dealt with efficiently.
South Cambridgeshire District Council have worked with JDi Solutions on many different projects over many years and have found the JDi team to be professional, forward thinking, honest and highly skilled in everything they do.
Throughout the eight years we have worked with JDi Solutions on our minerals and waste Local Plan consultations, they have always provided us with excellent customer support and a very quick, reliable service!
We understand the financial budget pressures on councils, so we keep our pricing straightforward and affordable, enabling you to plan and achieve your budgetary goals. A fixed low-cost annual license subscription fee will provide you with access to use the consultation system for everything from a single-use project to departmental or corporate-wide adoption or, if required, use across a local partnership.
To make procurement quick and simple, UK public sector organisations can purchase a licence for OpusConsult via the Government’s G-Cloud framework.
You own all the data collected. Our robust security keeps it safe.
All of our cloud-based services are securely hosted in the EU. Data is encrypted at rest and backed-up to a separate hosting provider within the EU.
We take the security, performance and reliability of our systems very seriously and we partner with some of the best in the business to deliver the highest quality service to our customers. Our EU based servers are maintained by world class server hosts Amazon AWS, and our Drupal sites take advantage of industry leading Linux server management and expertise from Code Enigma.
We’re 100% GDPR compliant, registered under the UK Data Protection Act and have appointed a board-level data protection officer.
The service conforms to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) Level AA.
To access the service, staff and stakeholders only need to use a modern web browser on an internet connected device. No software downloads are required.
Following a formal order and your kick-off meeting we will speedily make your Local Authority branded consultation software available for use and provide you with comprehensive support to get your first consultation up and running.
There’s no software to install, so no extra work for your IT team.
We will coordinate with you to arrange convenient times when all relevant council colleagues can attend virtual meetings for 4 x 2hr group training sessions, aimed to help you and your team to get the most out of the functionality and flexibility that OpusConsult offers.
Your dedicated customer success manager and the wider support team will guide you through platform set up, adoption and ongoing use. Utilising our wealth of experience and knowledge of best practice, we want to help you to efficiently achieve your Local Development Plan goals.
