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Planning and Engagement

An end-to-end solution for planning, strategy and policy documents.

Bring together multiple contributors to create consultation-ready, interactive documents that put the community at the heart of your policies and plans.

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Author, approve, publish and engage from a single platform

Manage the entire lifecycle of your planning and strategy documents, in one centralised platform. 

Unlimited authors accelerate the production process, while granular approvals guarantee nothing leaves your authority unchecked.   

Ensure inclusivity and analyse community response in real time with a range of engagement and reporting tools.

Organisation-wide collaborative authoring

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Organisation-wide collaborative authoring

Accelerate the plan creation process to meet your statutory production targets.

Develop plans that engage your community

Create engaging and interactive plans with consultation points in every paragraph, map and image for specific commenting. Add map links for location-based information and embedded media including video for content that truly encourages participation.

Say goodbye to checking and collating multiple documents

Co-authoring means anyone (or everyone) from across your authority - and even external consultants - can contribute to your planning document. Editing is intuitive, version control means you can check changes or roll back, and audit trails give document managers visibility of all activity.

Type once, update everywhere

Cascade re-usable content such as policies, definitions, charts, tables, images and more across multiple documents. With duplicated content eliminated, your documents are always current, everywhere.

Transparent approvals

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Transparent approvals

Accelerate your ability to get plans over the line with automated workflows, task-driven notifications and an audit trail that delivers visibility of every approval.

Remove the bottleneck of multiple reviewers

Assign team members, departments, managers and consultants specific sections of a document to review and approve simultaneously.

Know who approved what and when

Version control, approvals, comments and proposed changes are audited and tracked on a section-by-section basis, making sure nothing leaves the authority unchecked.

Collect evidence as you support the plan lifecycle

Capture all comments, review notes, proposed changes, approval and rejection information throughout the lifecycle of the document.

Multi-channel publishing

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Multi-channel publishing

Create branded documents in an instant with multi-channel, multi-language publishing, all hosted on a dedicated engagement portal for the community to access.

Publish plans at the touch of a button

With a single click, create print-ready PDFs and HTML versions of your plan from one approved master document.

Extend community reach with multi-language support

Publish your plans and consultations in multiple languages and host them on your engagement portal, allowing users to switch between bilingual content and controls.

Deliver an on-brand experience, every time

Control your branded document templates and engagement portal to ensure design guidelines are constantly applied across all documents and channels, ensuring a seamless citizen experience.

Managed changes with ease

Make last-minute changes and republish in one click without the need for a graphic designer, so you always maintain a single source of the truth, no matter what or when changes are made.

Drive community engagement

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Drive community engagement

Give your community a voice. Allow citizens to access consultations anytime, anywhere and on any device through a variety of engagement tools.

Be inclusive – widen participation to all

With surveys and polls on social media and offline engagement, your plan is accessible to all constituents and they can engage in a way convenient to them.

Documents don’t have to be dull

Deliver an engaging digital experience, bringing plans to life with dynamic content. Embed GIS links and consultation points into the plan where comments can be made directly against the issues that matter most.

Analyse community response

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Analyse community response

Access to powerful reports guarantees evidence-based decision making.

Accelerate the collection and review of responses

Submissions of any kind are returned to you in a structured format, allowing for swift collation and analysis, faster responses and easier reporting.

Automate responses individually or at scale

Reduce the burden of response letters and emails thanks to automation.

Comprehensive consultee management

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Comprehensive consultee management

Keep the conversation going by efficiently capturing stakeholder details in a secure consultee database. Drive ongoing participation with segmented email updates.

Build trust with continuous engagement

Encourage participants to register their interests so they can be automatically contacted for future consultations. Build trust and deepen community relationships by inviting constituents to comment on the topics that matter most to them.

Keep citizens up to date on their areas of interest

Give citizens the option to subscribe to a location and receive notifications when you release new or updated information relevant to the area of interest.


Enhance collaboration between your authority and community

Support all stakeholders throughout planning policy creation from a single, feature-rich solution

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Benefits for Community

Enhanced multi-channel engagement, supporting wider participation

Better experience via more interactive and dynamic documents

Improved decision-making transparency and feedback

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Benefits for Planners

Reduced overhead for producing and updating documents

Accelerated collection, review and feedback of stakeholder responses

More reliable and feature-rich co-authoring of documents

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Benefits for Authority

More consistent and collaborative planning lifecycle

Compliant and efficient engagement processes

Single system to handle the entire planning process


Author, approve, publish and engage

Transform your processes across the entire planning policy lifecycle

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Unlimited Co-Authors

Allow contributors inside and outside your authority to co-author your planning documents

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Extensive Consultation Points

Embed consultation feedback points to individual paragraphs, maps, images and video content

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Version Control & Audit Trail

Know who did what and when with a comprehensive review and approval process

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Multi-Channel Publishing

Publish print-ready PDF, HTML or directly to the Keystone engagement portal

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Consultee / Stakeholder Database

Accelerate the collection, review and response process

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Instant Reports

Generate reports in a format ready for the planning inspector


You're in good company

Trusted by over 200 public sector customers globally to support plan creation and engagement.

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Objective Keystone will allow us to easily manage the entire lifecycle of our Local Plan from a single platform.

We wanted to make it easier for all of our stakeholders to engage with the plan through regulatory stages and beyond. Keystone is in a unique position to meet our needs.

Brian Taylor

Head of Planning, Peak District National Park Authority

Whatever the document - we've got you covered!

  • Local Plan / Local Development Plan
  • Reg18 and Reg19
  • Neighbourhood Plan
  • Local Transport Plan
  • Housing Strategy
  • Minerals and Waste Plan
  • Flood Strategy and Climate Response
  • Council documents
  • Plus many more...

  • Resources

    Browse our latest news, content and customer stories

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    Digital Plan Authoring and Consultation at The Highland Council

    In terms of document production and streamlining the entire process, Objective Keystone is one of the best tools in the market.

    Scott Dalgarno

    Development Plans Manager, The Highland Council

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    Case Study

    South Lanarkshire Council

    Discover how the introduction of Objective Keystone has resulted in a 400% increase in the use of the council's planning website for consultations

    Read Case Study

    The simple way for planners to manage the document lifecycle.

    Bring together multiple contributors to create consultation-ready,
    interactive documents that put the community at the heart of your
    policies and plans.

    Get in touch