ANNEX 2
Examples from the Case Studies1. NORTHAMPTONSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL: A VARIETY OF TECHNIQUES
During 2000/1 and 2001/2 Northamptonshire County Council undertook consultation in a number of ways including:
i. Convening area located meetings consisting of Citizens’ Panel members plus other invitees;
ii. Budget issues being raised as part of the agenda of other routine fora, though these were not convened as budget consultation exercises;
iii. Budget proposals were issued as consultative documents to both district and local parish/town councils, other public agencies, voluntary and business sector organisations and other stakeholders
iv. Through internal scrutiny arrangements and via Area Committees
v. Via public internet and staff intranet feedback
The timing of the consultation process was as follows:
For both 2000/01 and 2001/02 the council took its budget consultations forward in new ways.
The aim was to reach beyond the usual interest groups and contact a wider range of people. Indeed, whilst accepting that the ‘usual suspects’ and powerful groups/lobbies would express their opinions, councillors were concerned to ensure that the consultation process was as broad and inclusive as possible and that all those that wished to contribute were able to do so. As one member commented in interview: “we wanted to ensure that the quiet voices would be heard”. Despite what was seen by the council as a relatively inexpensive outlay, the council was subject to critical comment from some elements of the local media for wasting money on such an exercise.
In 2000/01, Northamptonshire opted for ten ‘Public Sessions’ or conferences in place of routine public meetings, led by external facilitation provided by the ‘Neighbourhood Initiative Foundation’.
“we felt it important that the exercise should be aimed at setting policy priorities for the public rather than asking the public to identify what level of the budget they would like to pay – this was an important departure. We felt it important that we be identified with providing brand services people want rather than finding savings within the budget” (NCC officer)
The sessions were designed to be deliberative and not statistically representative. Levels of attendance varied within a range of five to fifty. At the sessions:
members and officers were not specifically invited – this was to prevent their dominating the proceedings;
those members and officers that were present were asked to observe for the purposes of feedback into the decision making process;
participants undertook various ‘hands-on’ exercises including the fictitious ‘shopping basket’ for purchasing items with a limited budget.
It was felt that this process had been positive in terms of the following:
(a) informing the council of public priorities, and
(b) allowed participants to become aware of policy making and budgetary pressure realities.
In 2001/02, five ‘public sessions’ took place around the county, facilitated by ‘Community Consultants’. 3500 people were invited to attend using Citizens’ Panel members. In addition, other stakeholders were sent budget information and invited to respond either in writing, through the Internet or by phone. Other stakeholders included:
previous consultees from other consultation exercises
voluntary sector bodies
borough and district councils and local town/parish councils
MPs/MEPs
Health Authority
Police Authority
business sector organisations
Over 250 people attended the events. A research company was commissioned to undertake reminder telephone calls, which was perceived as increasing turnout. Many other people came along to the events, having seen information in public libraries or having received material as identified stakeholders. Many of these people came as representatives of an issue or single interest. The facilitators dealt with these groups as a separate, but involved, part of the process.
Invitees received a briefing pack listing detailed proposals for possible budget savings and growth items, but some felt it too detailed. Staff and service-users were able to note whom and where services may be cut in some detail, which caused uncertainty and some anxiety amongst employees and service-users. The detailed information was also picked up by the local media. The overly detailed brief was regarded to be a mistake and is not to be repeated.
In one of the sessions, the local district council also presented its own budget options for consultation. It was felt that this joint approach was positive.
“Where we took a joint approach with the districts, members of the public were more able to distinguish who provides what services and how the council tax bill is divided. This assisted both the district and us. It also reduced the chance of us duplicating budget consultation exercises”. (NCC official).
In addition to the public sessions, the Internet was also used. Approximately 1500 hits were received. Most were believed to be from staff. A positive view was expressed in terms of employees being an important consultee population. In most cases, responses were rich in opinion and useful for considering options.
Officers and members recorded the proceedings of the Panel Meetings and Fora. These were analysed by Cabinet members at their budget meeting in order to make a final executive meeting.
KEY LESSONS
Consultation can advance the legitimating of decisions A decision was made to shape budget proposals around a 5% increase in council tax. This would have impacted on some direct service provision, given other commitments beyond the council’s control and the desire to move some resources to local priorities. The consultation process indicated generally that people did not want a reduction in services and would be prepared to see a greater level of council tax increases. Naturally, a substantial increase did result in opposition criticism. The opposition concentrated their criticism less on the results of the consultation and more on the process by which it was conducted. The media also gave negative coverage. In both cases the Leadership felt able to defend their final executive decision made as a result of the consultation.
Timing was difficult The public have little say within the objective setting process and are only left to consult on resultant effects of the council tax: service level ratios. It is intended that from April 2002, consultation will occur in two stages:
Consult on objective setting as part of the developing council Plan for the next three years. This will outline areas of spending priority;
Further detailed consultation will take place later in 2002 based upon set objectives in order to finalise the council tax decisions for 2003/4.
In-house skills and competencies need to be matched by external support
At the five sessions, experienced and independent facilitators were chosen to preside over events. Some concern was expressed that the facilitators did not posses sufficient knowledge on the technical points of local government finance. To redress any deficiency, members and officers were present to answer questions.Engaging ‘ordinary people’ is difficult but unplanned input proved to be valuable
Whilst the attendance was by invite only, various others did attend. For example, the representatives of local scout groups with concerns over the future community use of schools and residents of a care home proposed for closure came along to meetings. Whilst this might result in unrepresentative minorities being particularly vocal at an event, councillors actually noticed that the uninvited groups made a positive and valuable contribution alongside the Panel members. Moreover, direct contact between members and groups attending the various events provided a greater insight to the problems experienced by those groups. As one councillor commented that the meeting attended by the scout group was very useful.“We realised what an impact our decision would have on them and that it would be an immediate impact, which we hadn’t appreciated. We were able to negotiate far better as a result of the consultation and respond appropriately”.
Councillors need to be involved but to take a back seat
An interesting element of the consultation was the decision, described by one councillor as: ‘keeping members out of the deliberative process, as much as possible, to avoid it degenerating into argument, and to avoid defensiveness on the part of the council’.Whilst it is a truism that majority party members will be inclined to defend the council, and for that matter minority group members to attack the council, members do have a vital role to play in the deliberative process, particularly as conduits between communities and the council. Minimising councillor input to the deliberative process avoids their dominating the consultation process and drowning out the quiet voices.
2. DACORUM AND CONSULTATION THROUGH SIMALTO (SIMULTANEOUS MULTI-ATTRIBUTE LEVEL TRADE-OFF)
Changed circumstances meant that Dacorum had to consider some squeezing of its budget. Members argued that it was essential to engage the public through the consultation process and gain ‘the backing of as many of our residents as possible’. This aim was not only to identify what services needed to be cut but also those that justify support and the resultant council tax required to support them.
As a result, Dacorum chose SIMALTO as their primary consultation exercise. The council believed that it was essential to choose a methodology that would combine both qualitative and quantitative methods with a mind towards informing longer terms decisions over forthcoming years as well as the immediate budget. It was felt that SIMALTO would achieve both ‘representativeness’ and detailed opinion to inform this process.
The council decided not to include the entire budget within the consultation exercise. Only £600k of expenditure was included on the basis that other budget headings related to the provision of services with little or no direct interest to the council. In terms of timing, the Authority undertook consultation between November and January. The cost of the SIMALTO exercise was around £14k.
On the basis of the complexities of the exercise, the volume of researchers required and the number of interviews, the council decided to contract out the function to an independent consultancy. The ‘independence’ of the consultancy was believed to add legitimacy to the exercise. The council gained access to SIMALTO data for analysis via the consultant’s password protected website.
The decision to adopt SIMALTO was made by the Cabinet in the September prior to the RSG settlement. This allowed final arrangements to be put in place with the consultants and in turn the appointment of interviewers. Whilst the consultants managed the day to day aspects of the survey, the Head of Communications was still required to spend most of her time managing the project in order to achieve success. It is clear that even with outside assistance, a council choosing this option still needs to plan thoroughly and allow sufficient time for officers to undertake preparation and analysis.
SIMALTO is designed to allow policy makers to trade off competing demands in order to make a final decision. Just over three hundred residents were interviewed in their homes. The selection of those interviewed reflected the diversity of the local population. Initially over a thousand people were contacted and then sifted to ensure a high degree of representativeness in the sample.
After a general discussion people were asked about some specific budget options. They had to rule out those that they found totally unacceptable and highlight three or four issues of importance to them. They were then encouraged to ‘spend’ increasing levels of points on packages of services that they thought were most in need of additional support. At the end of the interview they were asked whether they would be prepared to pay a higher council tax to reach the different levels of higher spending.
Once all the interviews had been conducted the results were fed into the SIMALTO software package which in turn created an ‘ideal’ budget option. One that on the basis of the preferences expressed through the allocation of points would most satisfy people. The model could also be manipulated to look at the satisfaction ratings of other options or set a goal of 80% satisfaction to see what budget it would come up with.
The greatest benefit of the method is that it provides insights on the basis of a more representative sample that might be obtained by other means, for example a general leaflet mail-out. It also allowed for reflective judgement on the part of the people involved.
3. HERTFORDSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL – REVISING YOUR APPROACH
In 1999, Members of Hertfordshire County Council decided that ‘tax and spend’ issues were so important that the public should be consulted. Consequently, a six-page consultation document was sent out to all 400,000 households. Residents were asked to indicate a preference from three levels of possible taxation and their relative implications as far as service provision. 11,000 people responded. The majority of replies were for the middle of the three options. However, when the document was being prepared and delivered, the council did not know what the settlement from central government would be and therefore had to make some assumptions when presenting the three options. In the end, the settlement was better than had been anticipated and the authority was able to achieve a ‘standstill’ budget at a lower level than had been anticipated. Rather than being praised for this, the authority was criticised in the local press for having consulted on three options but deciding on ‘option 4’.
One other significant problem occurred with this consultation exercise. Local agencies were employed to deliver the forms, but the authority was far from confident that universal distribution was achieved. There was no way to establish whether the views expressed by the 11,000 who responded were representative of the population.
What Hertfordshire did next…
The next time round Hertfordshire decided to make use of the Citizens Panel to help ensure the consultation reached beyond the ‘usual suspects’. The Panel members were originally recruited by MORI: a large number of ‘sampling points’ were selected at random across the county. Within each point, trained interviewers carried out interviews in respondents’ own homes. Measures were put in place to ensure that those interviewed provided a spread across gender, age, work status, etc.For the budget consultation, self-completion questionnaires were sent to all 2,737 members of the Hertfordshire Panel, and a total of 1,221 were returned in the month-long fieldwork period, representing a response rate of 45%. Data were weighted by gender, age, social class, district and working status. Over half of the Panel members favoured the highest increase, with 20% favouring the middle option, and 16% the least increase.
The Panel was also the source of a group of 19 who took part in a community workshop on the budget. Panel members were telephoned at home to ask them to attend. Using demographic information collected at the time the Panel was set up, recruiters ensured that a cross-section of the County was represented. Participants were offered an incentive to help ensure attendance. On the day, there was some broad discussion about quality of life, attitudes towards the county council services and the council’s promises for next year, to break the ice. After that, participants were given a presentation by Bill Ogley, the Chief Executive, outlining the services provided by the county council, the council’s sources of income and what the money is spent on. After this, two group discussions took place about participants’ preferences for the level of council tax increase and reasons for selecting different levels. Then representatives from both groups presented the findings and following the presentations there was further discussion by participants. At the end of the day, the respondents had developed an informed, but not consensual, view of budget priorities.
Consultation on tax and spend is now tied into consultation on overall priorities and the Best Value Performance Plan. The process is now about setting priorities for the following year that run concurrently with the budget cycle – ‘so we now know that the budget and the priorities are aligned’. The Citizens Panel and focus groups are used for this work. It is felt that this results in a more cost effective means of canvassing residents opinions. Participants are surveyed by post. The authority has also invited a small number (19) of panel members to a one day ‘Budget Priorities’ Workshop in which they were more fully informed of the various tax and spend options.
4. OXFORDSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL: ENGAGING RESIDENTS IN ‘REAL’ TAX SETTING
Although Oxfordshire County Council was not a formal case study for this research, it does serve as a useful example of how an authority can approach council tax consultation, and so is included here as an illustration.
Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) has consulted with residents since 1998 on budget priorities and council tax levels, including formal consultation, face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews and qualitative research.
Residents’ surveys of budget priorities have played an important part in Members’ decisionmaking, and the council as a whole has found the outcomes of its quantitative research useful in obtaining an overall picture of the level of council tax that Oxfordshire residents would support. But survey work has proved to be frustrating for councillors who have felt unable to tease out which specific budget policies residents support or oppose. There have also been concerns about respondents’ interpretation of the options presented, and of presenting options before a budget ceiling has been announced.
This year, OCC decided to go further and understand why residents hold their views. The county council was also interested in the impact of thoroughly briefing residents and in how a group of residents can successfully become engaged in the difficult decisions facing Members.
This pointed towards a qualitative research approach and therefore Members decided to hold a community workshop to undertake ‘real’ budget modelling, to explore in detail the public’s attitudes to council spending and tax levels.
A full day of discussions took place, moderated by a research company, with briefings on the county council’s finances by Council Leader Keith Mitchell and County Treasurer Chris Gray. These included budget-setting priorities and visions for the future. At the end of the day, participants were asked to manipulate the county council’s ‘real’ budget model, to reflect their earlier discussions. The model was a spreadsheet, prepared by the Treasurer’s Department, which enabled participants instantly to see the effect of their ‘decisions’ on overall council spending and, in turn, on the level of tax increase. Each group of residents in the workshop was charged with negotiating their preferred budget and council tax increase. Officers from the Council’s Treasurer’s department manipulated the budget model on instruction from participants in each of the discussion groups, while the moderator probed respondents as to why they made the decisions they had. The council representative along with a nominee from each of the discussion groups, then fed back to the final plenary session their group’s conclusions.
Following their informed discussions, all three groups opted for a council tax increase in excess of the amount presented by the County Treasurer to safeguard existing services (6 per cent). Two of the three groups proposed an increase of around 12 per cent. Most participants considered that service improvements justified council tax increases and that they would be prepared to meet the required amount. As the workshop progressed, participants became notably more knowledgeable about the council and developed a genuine appreciation about the complexities of the tasks facing their elected representatives. As one respondent put it:
“(The day) gave me a good insight into the responsibilities and decisions the Council has to deal with. Good luck!”
This brought about a shift in attitudes from ‘critical’ of the council to ‘happy to be consulted’. Participants welcomed the opportunity to be consulted and became impressively engaged with their task:
“Very enjoyable and enlightening… It’s good to feel one can have some input.”
Both councillors and participants thought the day was an overall success. The approach highlighted the importance of having experienced moderators and of involving briefed officers in the model manipulation sessions – as opposed to the usual qualitative approach of clients taking the role of ‘passive observer’. Indeed, OCC representatives were an active and integral part of the day. By fully briefing them and involving them in the methodology, the approach proved more creative and productive. The day also showed the importance of preparation: having a well thought-out topic guide and approach, as well as considered projective techniques and stimulus materials. It was critical that the research team maintained continuity in their approach in the provision of information on the budget options (for example, by the use of hand-outs and flipcharts), and with the approach to model manipulation. Researchers also needed to allow adequate time for respondents to become more knowledgeable about the subject, to develop their ideas as individuals, and then to reflect as a group. The budget model manipulation technique could not have been crammed into a two-hour focus group – it required a workshop format involving a full day of interactive briefings and discussions.
Councillors have found the exercise of great use, with residents’ views being taking into serious consideration in setting the council budget. Council Leader Keith Mitchell who, attended the whole workshop with colleagues from all parties, concluded:
“I was impressed by participants’ interest and enjoyment of the day. We found it invaluable to hear at first hand what they had to say. There is no doubt in my mind that the workshop influenced the Executive in setting their budget. In particular, it made us rethink our approach to the development of a Contact Centre as well as influencing our views about the level of council tax.”
Published 4 July 2002
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