Title

Councils really need to be more imaginative if they want people to be more involved in consultations on local issues, suggests Laurie Waller. Local government consultation. The prospect might conjure up images of 7.30pm meetings, damp Tuesday evenings, sombre government buildings, clipboard pushers and talk of ‘positive discharge outcomes'. Unless an eco town is being built in our backyard, we might forgive ourselves for attending to other, more immediate priorities in our lives. Whether or not you agree with this slightly-indulgent characterisation, the fact is that for the vast majority of citizens, local government consultation is just not a high priority. The Government's empowerment agenda seeks to revitalise local democracy, encouraging councils to re-imagine their relationships with their citizens through, for example, duties to promote democratic understanding in the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill, currently going through the Lords. The new duty to involve encourages councils not only to use consultation, but also to use it effectively. Simply posting written consultations on the council's website may be a nice way to minimise total expenditure, but will it engage widely with ‘representatives of local people'? Unlikely. Bad consultation will often lead to bad decisions, which could have cost implications. So how can councils engage the right audiences in public consultation? Working in partnership with Lambeth LBC and five primary schools, Involve – a not-for-profit organisation set up in 2005 to increase knowledge of public participation and improve its practice – looked at how the local authority could engage young families in a consultation on the borough's Children and young people's plan. The result was the subversive marriage of the seemingly-contradictory notions of fun and consultation in a project we titled ‘Say&Play' The purpose of this concept was to bring consultation to time-poor, young families. These voices are often absent from traditional forms of consultation, not because young families don't want to engage with their council, but because the way consultation is conducted often does not fit with their lifestyles. This comment from a female parent epitomises what many others told us: ‘I don't avoid local authority events but I need a reason [to go]. If it's something that appeals to my children, then I tend to go, and if not, then we don't.' We gave local primary schools a small budget and asked staff and pupils to help us design fun days during which we could run the consultation. By handing the design of the event to the school, we created genuine enthusiasm for the event and ensured high attendance. And how did we engage people in the serious business of local government when they came to have fun, relax and socialise? The design of the consultation activities revolved around several key principles – activities must be quick to complete, accessible to parents and pupils, non-intrusive, and must allow people to drop-in and drop-out when they feel like it. Rather than forms and spreadsheets, we went with colourful, tactile activities – voting with beads in jars and sticky dots on flipcharts, graffiti tables and video. Some of the features of Say&Play will not be new to many readers – quick, interactive ways of collecting quantitative and qualitative data is the lifeblood of market research companies and is widespread in both public and third sectors. We wanted officers and citizens to re-imagine what consultation could be . Over the course of five events, more than 650 people took part. Of those surveyed at events, 75% had never taken part in a local government consultation before. This, we hope, demonstrates that consulting widely can be simple and cost effective. Say&Play is not a panacea to all the challenges of the empowerment agenda. In particular, councils need to be transparent about how they use consultation data and communicate this back to participants. But Say&Play does offer a good first step to an effective and widespread consultation, and we hope this format will inspire those working in other service areas to look at where the civic energy exits in their local authority, and harness it for good decision-making. A free toolkit and report on the Say&Play approach can be found at www.involve.org.uk Laurie Waller is a researcher with Involve

Title

WHITEHALL

Having your say and enjoying it

SUBSCRIBE TO CONTINUE READING