Time to re-engage with Consultation

 Say the word ‘Consultation’ in most rooms and there will be a collective shudder and yet at its best, public consultation can be the cement that binds an institution with those it professes to represent.  Much of the issue lies in the ways that consultation has been misused and abused in recent years. I believe it’s time to re-engage with this most useful and powerful tool by understanding what it is and how to consult effectively.

When Rudyard Kipling wrote about “six honest serving men” he may well have been writing about the curiosity of youth, but his watch words “What and Why and When And How And Where and Who” feel equally applicable to our approach to public consultation.

The Local Government Association defines consultation as “any activity that gives local people a voice and an opportunity to influence important decisions. It involves listening to and learning from local people before decisions are made or priorities are set”. Crucially, it is not intended to be a referendum, it is a way of informing a decision-making process, not concluding it and it is on this point that consultees and consultors are so often at odds. The manipulation of a consultation process is not the sole domain of those charged with running it. Public pressure groups can be equally culpable in the misrepresentation of a process designed to inform decision making and arrive at a better outcome.

The Cabinet Office amended its own consultation principles in 2018, to demonstrate “the government’s desire to engage more effectively with the public”. In the preamble to their renewed guidance, the Cabinet Office expressed their desire to use more digital methods to consult with a wider group of people at an earlier stage in the policy-forming process”. They also pledged to make it easier for the public to contribute their views and try harder to use clear language and plain English in consultation documents, two principles that are enshrined along with x others, in their guidance.

Along with the guidance offered by the LGA, the Cabinet Office principles serve as a useful structure around which any consultation exercise, be it at the national or Parish level, can be fleshed out. Most importantly, consultations should have a purpose, they should not be undertaken for the sake of it. Having identified the purpose, it is essential to “consider the full range of people, business and voluntary bodies affected by the policy, and whether representative groups exist”.

Understanding who is to be consulted and what questions they are to be consulted on, enables the consulting body to ensure that it is accessible, both in terms of its publicity and the mechanisms used to gather feedback. In this regard, it is important to recognise the limitations that groups might have, particularly those for whom English is not be an accessible language. Consultations are often built around the convenience of communicating with the “usual suspects”, those well versed in sharing their views, yet that fails to recognise the important contribution, potentially contradictory, that other groups and communities can provide.