Redefining Engagement: the C3 Communications mission

“Communities are at the heart of the government’s mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower."  

Secretary of State for Energy Security & Net Zero, Ed Miliband, highlighted the importance of community engagement in his Statement of Strategic Priorities to Great British Energy. 

At C3 Communications, this is a subject very close to our hearts and one we know a thing or two about. So, we thought we’d take the opportunity to reintroduce ourselves and, more importantly, the mission driving our work.  

With a combined 40+ years working in energy and big infrastructure, we have pretty much seen it all – the good, the bad and the ugly - when it comes to stakeholder and community engagement.  We’ve noticed that projects often fall short of the mark in terms of genuine engagement, which should be designed and delivered to enable communities and stakeholders to influence the design and scope of projects (or indeed the organisations leading them).  Very often, activity billed as ‘engagement’ is, in fact, ‘communication’ – a one-way broadcast, telling stakeholders what has happened, or is planned. At its very worst it feels like a box-ticking exercise.  

Real engagement is about building strong, trusting relationships with communities and stakeholders from the get-go, right through project concept to construction and beyond.  

Why does this matter?  

Put simply, because it’s the right thing to do.  

Genuine engagement builds trust between the project and stakeholders, increasing the likelihood of community acceptance and, therefore, successful delivery of the project.

Redefining engagement  

Currently the UK Government is consulting on the DCO process with a focus on pre-application consultation.  

Of course, we support plans to make it simpler and quicker for projects to progress through to construction, however, it is important that real community engagement is established and maintained from day one with anyone who will be affected by the project. And, at this stage, it is unclear what role communities and other stakeholder groups will play in the examination process – definitely a space to watch. 

We believe that real engagement means actively listening to the community’s views and being willing to make changes.   

That doesn’t mean pleasing everybody all the time (we’re not miracle workers!) but, in the world of major infrastructure, where project timescales are long, people’s memories are even longer. It’s for this reason that listening and adapting in the early stages of a project makes absolute sense, leading to better relationships and, in the end, a better outcome for everyone involved.  

Of course, it won’t always be possible to adapt project plans in light of community or stakeholder feedback but, with strong and trusting relationships established, telling the truth about that will be easier and more likely to be accepted.

And what would we know?  

Together and individually, we’ve worked on some of the UK’s biggest energy projects. 

Saranne has more than 25 years’ experience in communications and engagement, with almost 20 of those years spent working in nuclear fission and fusion.  

She has been involved with the STEP Fusion programme, established to build the world’s first fusion energy power plant, since 2019. Saranne set up the communications team for STEP from scratch and was a key member of the site selection team, leading stakeholder and community engagement throughout the process. With the announcement of West Burton as the future home of STEP, Saranne was instrumental in building strong and trusting relationships with stakeholders at all levels, resulting in very high levels of public acceptance for the project.  

Saranne has also been working with newcleo – an Advanced Nuclear Technology company - over the last two years, leading communications and stakeholder engagement for the UK siting project. Just weeks away from announcing the company’s first site, newcleo announced that it was suspending its UK operations at the end of July this year.  

Saranne also worked for Horizon Nuclear Power, leading communications and community engagement in North Wales, including the first non-statutory consultation for the Wylfa Newydd project. Before that, she worked for Magnox (now Nuclear Restoration Services), where she was Head of Communications with responsibility for sites, Corporate Social Responsibility and socio-economic investment. 

Pippa has over 25 years in communications, spending the last 10 years or so specialising in leading public consultation as part of the DCO process for large infrastructure projects. She was consultation lead for Wylfa Newydd taking the project through its local planning applications as well as the statutory DCO consultations and into examination. 

Pippa was working on the Bradwell B project (a new nuclear power station in Essex) when the COVID-19 pandemic started and was instrumental in converting the consultation from face-to-face to online. The work of the Bradwell B team was highlighted as best practice at the time in a National Infrastructure Planning Association (NIPA) paper ‘Development Consent Orders and the Coronavirus Pandemic’. 

Pippa also supported Gatwick’s Northern Runway project and most recently has been leading the successful DCO examination process for Jera Nex bp’s Mona offshore wind project and Morgan Transmission Assets. She is also coordinating the consultation and DCO process for the STEP Fusion programme.  

She started her career with Magnox, working her way from Public Relations Officer at one of the generating sites to Head of Communications. This experience gave her a solid grounding and understanding of communications in highly regulated environments. It’s also where she first met Saranne, although it was many years before they began to discuss the possibility of joining forces as C3 Communications. 

Want to know more about C3? 

We set up C3 Communications because we feel we have the right experience and expertise to support and enable the development of big infrastructure projects across the UK – from site selection through DCO to construction. 

We are absolutely passionate about the projects we work with and the need to redefine engagement across energy and infrastructure. We want to do this by offering an expert guiding hand for developers to do it right, to do it with heart and in a way that realises the benefits that these projects can bring to both the developer and communities across the country.  

Want to know more? Follow us on LinkedIn for more tips, tools and conversations on ‘Redefining engagement’ or get in touch for a chat hello@c3communications.co.uk