CHAPTER 5
Developing a dialogueThere is general agreement that consultation over council tax and budget matters should involve deliberation by the public and stakeholders. The point of consultation should be to enable people to have the space and the opportunity to reflect on the choices that the budget process presents to them. Your local authority may choose to consult in order to achieve one or all of the following objectives:
Managing partnership relationships
Engagement and legitimisation
Challenging social exclusion
This chapter examines each of the objectives in turn and identifies the appropriate consultation techniques that are associated with each objective. Table 5.1 provides a more detailed assessment of the variety of options for encouraging deliberation that are available. The concluding section of the chapter identifies the need for a shared ownership for the consultation process within the authority.
Our case studies revealed a range of approaches used to consult people on council budgets. Below is our assessment of the main approaches, with the exception of referenda, dealt with in the next chapter. On the whole, the quantitative, qualitative and deliberative approaches can be used to consult the ‘usual suspects’, the wider public, and ‘hard-toreach’ groups. With quantitative surveys, the more representative the approach is, the better it is at reaching the general public – and there are ways of ensuring that hard-toreach groups are involved. With qualitative and deliberative methods, the type of people consulted depends on the approach taken to ‘recruiting’ participants. The methods listed under the heading ‘other methods’ are mostly suitable for consulting more informed and involved residents (the ‘usual suspects’) and stakeholders.
Table 5.1: Tools for dialogue over council tax
Consultation Techniques Assessment Quantitative Surveys Surveys take a ‘snapshot’ of opinion Opinion surveys Generally speaking, the more representative the approach is, the more costly it is. Postal surveys give you findings from a rather self-selecting sample, but this approach tends to be least expensive. In-street surveys (which tend to exclude the less mobile) and telephone surveys are also possible. Face-to-face, in-home surveys are usually the most representative because they include people who would not self-select – but in-home surveys are the most expensive. An opinion survey is only useful if you get the questions right. Surveys of Citizens’ Panel members Members of local authorities’ Citizens’ Panels are a resource for an enormous range of types of consultation. However, most Panel surveys are postal, so we are focusing on this technique.
Panels usually consist of a fairly good cross-section of the population (although it is possible over-state how representative they really are). This makes panels very suitable for ‘dipstick’ surveys to help you understand the overall priorities of a broad cross-section of residents.
With careful questionnaire design, you can take advantage of the fact that panel members often grow in knowledge and understanding of the local government issues, because of their interaction with the council. This makes it possible to survey them on specific budget options.
Qualitative Techniques Qualitative research digs ‘below the surface’ Focus Groups One approach is to get an external company to ‘recruit’ small groups of people from particular backgrounds, or areas, to engage them in a moderated discussion. Some councils recruit their own participants, sometimes from their Panel. An incentive can be useful in encouraging people to attend.
This approach can be especially helpful in reaching those groups whose voices are seldom heard – particularly visible minorities, such as black and minority ethnic residents and young people.
A programme of focus groups can never be representative – although this claim is sometimes made! Rather, it enables you to explore the reasons for people’s views. In discussion on specific budget options, there can be a deliberative element.
The interpretation of judgements and opinions of focus groups may not be straightforward – and this should be taken into account.
Deliberative Approaches Deliberative approaches enable people to take account of relevant information in forming an opinion Community Workshops Workshops are the most common approach taken that is designed to be deliberative. The expectation is that participants’ views at the end of the consultation will not be those they held at the start. This is because participants have access to information (for example, on the implications of budget cuts on specific services) and even expert witnesses.
It is worth stressing that the point of deliberative research is to generate an ‘informed view’, and not to examine the process that participants go through to form their view, nor to measure changes in opinion.
The people described elsewhere as the ‘usual suspects’ may not be appropriate participants – and neither are well-informed stakeholders with their own agenda.
The main practical drawback is that, although the council gets to understand the ‘informed view of ordinary residents’, only a very small number have taken part, and decisions taken as a result still need to be communicated to residents at large.
Structured public meetings: budget conferences This remains a favoured technique and one that still has much value in it. People are invited to a public meeting but one where the debate is structured with break out groups, information provided in a variety of ways, options presented and facilitators on hand to ensure that the meeting is managed effectively and does not degenerate into an ‘us and them’ confrontation.
The approach differs little from that of a community workshop. However, the people who attend cannot be seen as representative of the wider population (or even ‘typical’) and it may be difficult for those groups who are traditionally hard-toreach to be enticed to and engaged in a public meeting. This technique is more suited to reaching established partners and stakeholders.
Other consultation techniques Interactive web-site This option should become of increasing significance and may be particularly suited to debates about over complex issues such as local government finance, given the availability of explanatory notes and information boxes that can be attached to such exchanges.
Initially, it may best be used when seeking to consult groups who already have some engagement with the council – it could provide a convenient and powerful way of organising and recording debate and judgements about priorities.
There is little evidence of good practice to date.
Shared interest forums Your council may have a youth parliament or forum set up to consult with members of ethnic minority communities. These forums can provide a focus for consulting about budget issues, although there is of course a danger that the focus of discussion will be on the narrow issues of concern of the particular shared interest. Such forums can be asked to take forward a process of consultation in order to reach groups that are often excluded. Area Forums Breaking the budget down into more manageable area-focused bites can give local people more of a feel for the choices that may confront the council. There is a danger of bidding wars between different areas. User Forums Consultation with existing users could form part of a general platform of budget debate activity. Of course, there is a need to balance the demand for additional resources that comes from these groups with the views of taxpayers in general. Mailed consultation documents to stakeholders This approach enables quite a lot of detailed information about budget choices to be provided to relatively well-informed stakeholders. They can respond to the choices that are posed and also provide their own suggestions about better options. The approach relies on the quality of the networks that the local authority has developed and is best suited to dealing with established partners. MANAGING PARTNERSHIP RELATIONSHIPS
Several of the case study authorities visited, had been determined to ensure their key partners felt involved in the budget choices faced by the council. In effect the aim was to ensure that good relationships were not undermined by unexpected budget decisions and that partners understood some of the dilemmas confronting the council. Moreover it was recognised that the local or specialised knowledge of the partners could help in making budget cuts or allocations. The key aim was to be much clearer about the likely impact of various budget choices.
The quality of information that can be provided for these type of deliberative exchange can be quite detailed and specific since most of those consulted are already well informed about the council’s services and the likely impact of any budget changes. As an official from East Riding Council explained, promoting a dialogue about budget options amongst key stakeholders can offer real benefits:
‘We initially set out with two methods of consultation – a survey and a day conference. The problem was they gave two sets of results. We wanted considered responses that would allow us to make a decision based upon detail of many complex issues. The Day Conference helped us here but the survey did not. All the survey told us was that people wanted even more services but were only willing to pay the lowest council tax increase. That was something both unachievable and unrealistic – we couldn’t do both. What the Day Conference did was to provide us with some form of considered approach where consultees had sat down and thought through what services would have to go, what should stay and what council tax they would really be prepared to pay. With the survey, such thought-out responses could not be achieved where respondents were asked raw detailed questions in a matter of few minutes – unlike the Conference, they were not able to sit down and think out the implications’.
For reaching out to current partners and stakeholders, use of existing channels, such as user, issue or area forums, would seem appropriate. It may be appropriate to think of a structured public meeting. One option is a budget conference in which a variety of stakeholders are called together to consider the choices confronting the council. Another option is to mail out or otherwise distribute a budget document with various options and choices in order to obtain feedback from key stakeholders. Sutton’s experience in consulting stakeholders is discussed in Table 5.2.
Table 5.2: Sutton case study Sutton has carried out a formal budget consultation based on a distributed annual document produced for the last 15 years. The document is available in libraries but is sent to interest groups directly. The key is to have meaningful dialogue with interested partners. The document contains quite detailed material on the budget but also general information on corporate objectives. The scope of the consultation is set on pragmatic grounds and the focus is on where the council has still to make a final decision.
‘The officers give us a whole list of options and essentially we start from either end and say these are the things we’re going to do anyway, so we’ll leave them to one side. These are things that however bad things are this year we wouldn’t be able to do, so we will not consider those, and then we focus on the things in the middle, these are the things we consult about.’
(Sutton Councillor)The document is made available to groups at the beginning of January once the level of central government support is known. There are three weeks in which responses can be sent in. As well as asking for responses in writing to the consultation document, meetings are set up with key groups such as head-teachers/governors, residents groups, where there are particular issues of interest to them. On average, Sutton get about 1,000 responses. The responses are collated and read by the leader and other councillors. Many responses come in the form of standard letters from organised sources. The key benefits identified are:
Feedback on specific proposals from people who, as they are interested parties rather than general public ‘know what they are talking about’
‘Somebody’s come along and said well actually don’t do it like that, do it like this, sometimes it might not actually change the headline decision or the financial decision, but it might say well actually if you’re going to cut fifty thousand pounds off this budget, if you do it in this way that’s less harmful than doing it in that way. So that kind of consultation is actually very helpful, very successful.’ (Sutton councillor)
Dialogue over the years has broken down cynicism and made interested parties feel they are contributing to debate
It doesn’t happen overnight, but over the years of demonstrating that if people say something it does have an influence. They might not just get what they want because they shout loudest or because they’ve got the longest petition, but things change” (Sutton councillor)
The strength of the approach is in reaching partners and formal groups rather than the general public
‘I think in terms of engaging with organised groups in the borough, you know, whether it’s friends of libraries or green recycling lobby or whatever, it’s quite successful. I think engagement with the general public is much more difficult, I’m not sure we do that as well as we would like. You know, I mean the commitment is there I think, the commitment is there to try and have a dialogue. It is quite difficult to get people sufficiently involved in the issues to understand.’ (Sutton official)
The key dilemma in this approach is whether partners will just defend what benefits them, that is, use the consultation to protest against any unfavourable budget changes, or whether they will engage with the budget challenge and identify ways in which things can be done differently in order to save money, but still achieve service and community goals.
ENGAGEMENT AND LEGITIMISATION
Here, the overarching objective is to reach out to the general public and test responses to a variety of budget options, in order to help steer and legitimise the choices made by the council. The underlying aim is to help the council make judgements through providing new insights about what the public would regard as an acceptable budget change.
The information targeted at the general public has to be more general than that provided to partners. Some of the questions that the public may be asked can have a hypothetical quality. The key dilemma of this approach is how to make a judgement about the quality and depth of the public response that has been obtained. It would seem unwise to follow what is perceived as an ill thought out ‘off the top of the head’ response. Equally, to reject proposals that come from this route can appear arrogant and defensive. It may also be that the messages from the public are mixed and complex and in need of interpretation. The key in this area may be to mix and match various methodologies in order to give a fuller, more detailed insight into public opinion.
Northamptonshire County Council chose to use a range of methods in order to increase the council’s insight into public opinion. Indeed, one event in the series was undertaken jointly with one of the district councils in the area. Detail on Northamptonshire’s approach can be found at Annex 2.
Other suitable methods for consulting the general public would be opinion polling or the use of an interactive web site. Each method has some attractions and some drawbacks. A one-off opinion survey can give a representative response, but it may be driven by less reflective and ‘off the top of the head’ responses from the public. A survey of an established citizens’ panel is an attractive option, in part, because they are likely to be more familiar with the council but equally it may suffer from the danger that the panel will be too sympathetic to the views of the council. An interactive website could equally draw a cross section of public responses, although it may be difficult to judge the representative quality of the responses obtained.
Dacorum Council has used a special technique called SIMALTO to encourage a representative sample of people to think about budget choices (see Annex 2). The key to the scheme is that it allows you to get a reflective judgement from a cross-section of public opinion about budget choices. It also allows you to consider the public’s reaction to a range of budget options.
The examples described above show that, with a certain amount of perseverance, it is possible to construct a dialogue with members of public in a way that provides a thoughtful and reflective contribution to budget decision-making. The important thing is not to give up but to keep on trying. Hertfordshire County Council, successfully revised their approach in the light of difficulties encountered the first time round – see Annex 2 for more detail.
CHALLENGING SOCIAL EXCLUSION
How can we get the voices that are often unheard involved in deliberation about budget choices? There are some obvious things to think through such as:
Producing information material in different languages.
Considering the location. Sometimes meeting on their home ground, in settings with which they are familiar is the key to getting them to participate.
Timing meetings so that they are accessible to different groups.
The most obvious technique for engaging hard-to-reach groups is the use of focus groups. Through this method, difficult to reach groups can be actively targeted and encouraged to give their views. Surveys can also be designed in a way that ensures often excluded groups are a key part of the sample.
Another option is to ask stakeholders and partners in existing channels of consultation to take forward the task of reaching out to their communities and bringing the results back to you. Birmingham City Council, for example, has used its young person’s parliament in order to consult over local finance issues (see Table 5.6).
Table 5.6: Budget-setting and young people: Birmingham ‘Young People’s Parliament’ This year (for 2002/3 budget) the council held an event with Birmingham’s ‘Young People’s Parliament’. The Parliament works through schools, with one hundred children elected for a year from across Birmingham. The consultation exercise took place very late in budget process. Information was presented on what council does and it spends its money on. The Parliament was then split into small groups facilitated by a teacher and someone from council’s finance department. Each group was given £3 million and asked to allocate it to various priorities. The idea was educate young people about rationing/trade-offs. There was a group feedback session at the end.
Looking at consultation more generally, other methods have also been found to be successful in engaging hard-to-reach groups. Existing social and community networks can sometimes be exploited by using community or advice centres to help conduct consultation. Community ambassadors or, more generally, community leaders can ‘spread the word’ that a consultation exercise is underway and that it is an opportunity that their often silent, or excluded, community should take up.
The dilemma is that hard-to-reach groups will have specific issues that will need to be addressed. You have to recruit these groups for involvement in consultation in a specific way. This will require making clear what the council can deliver and what they have to gain by being part of the consultation. The normal advice for engaging such groups is to start with an issue they can relate to – something concrete they could see would make a difference to their lives. Budget-setting is one that would seem to lend itself to such a debate. If the danger of raising unwarranted expectations can be confronted head on then it would appear that an effective dialogue could be constructed.
Published 4 July 2002
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