Region

East of England and East Anglia

Solution

Mapper, Engagement, Streets

We've taken over 2,000 responses in total for this most recent public consultation... something like 1,900 responses just through the website alone, which is a phenomenal rate of response.

Andi Caddy, Highways Engineer, Cambridgeshire County Council

Overview

Cambridgeshire, one of England’s most rapidly growing and rural counties, faces unique challenges in managing its extensive road network and maintaining a high quality of life for its residents.

The Traffic Management Service at Cambridgeshire Council is responsible for implementing permanent traffic regulation orders (TROs), ranging from simple parking schemes to complex bus gates and speed limits.

Challenges

For years, Cambridgeshire’s traffic management team navigated the complexities of Traffic Regulation Orders (TROs) with a process that, while compliant, felt increasingly outdated. 

”Historically, public engagement was minimal. We relied heavily on traditional media like local newspapers, which severely limited our reach and the quality of feedback we received. Our issue around consultation is that very often, we don't get very much engagement from the public... The problem we've always had is this issue around engagement and reaching people who need to know

Andi CaddyHighways Engineer, Cambridgeshire County Council

The team was managing around 150 permanent TROs a year, but the feedback loop was narrow. The rise of social media and the decline of local press readership meant traditional announcements were often missed by the very residents they were meant to inform. The process was labour-intensive and failed to capture the diverse perspectives needed for robust decision-making, especially as the schemes themselves grew in complexity—from simple parking changes to major greenway projects and town centre regenerations.

The Council sought a solution that could foster greater public participation, increase transparency, and provide a more efficient way to gather and analyse feedback.

The solution: AppyWay's Consultation Module

To modernise their approach and meet the demands of their political administration for better engagement, Cambridgeshire turned to AppyWay’s digital Consultation module. The goal was to create a single, intuitive, and accessible platform for all traffic scheme consultations, including notices of intent, traffic calming, pedestrian crossings, and even new initiatives like Quiet Lanes.

The AppyWay platform provided an interactive, map-based interface where residents could easily find information relevant to their location, understand proposed changes contextually, and submit their feedback directly.

This self-serve model empowered residents to engage on their own terms, while freeing up the council team from individually managing countless email enquiries and written letters.

Public consultation for proposed prohibition of loading at any time, in Cambridgeshire

”What AppyWay lets us do is it allows us to tell people to access this one source of information... where they can interact with an online map and they can capture the information that they need contextually as well. It's not just a load of random legalese documents on a website somewhere.

Andi CaddyHighways Engineer, Cambridgeshire County Council

Results and Benefits:

Dramatic Increase in Public Participation

Example of a form used to gather feedback from the public on AppyWay’s Consultation Module

The platform didn’t just digitise the old process; it fundamentally changed the scale and quality of public engagement.

Before AppyWay With AppyWay
Minor double-yellow line consultation 12 200
20-mile-an-hour scheme in a rural village 20 100

Controversial schemes, such as the implementation of modal filters and 20mph speed limits, are prime examples. These can generate a phenomenal level of feedback that is difficult to manage with traditional methods. AppyWay encourages stakeholders to respond to complex consultations and self-serve, allowing officers to manage and analyse all responses from a single, centralised platform.

While processing this volume of feedback increases the workload, it achieves a core objective: making the TRO process more transparent and accountable. The council is now armed with a rich dataset that truly reflected public opinion, fulfilling the desire of its politicians for better, more meaningful engagement.

The intuitive nature of the platform was a key factor in its success. 

The data captured through AppyWay enabled the council to perform deeper analysis, using postcodes to create GIS maps that visually represented the geographic distribution of support and objections for a scheme—an invaluable tool for informing decision-makers.

Every part of the AppyWay platform seems to be well thought through. It's intuitive, both from an officer using it and someone at the other end, the stakeholder.

Andi Caddy, Highways Engineer, Cambridgeshire County Council

Thriving cities, from the kerb up

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