Councils are obliged to consult with their citizens about changes to the area, but they rarely act on the feedback. They should be required to record how proposals have altered in light of the responses received
How often do you read of councils launching a consultation exercise so that ‘local people can have their say?’ If there were a banned list of meaningless local government jargon, this phrase would definitely be competing for a podium spot.
Translated, it really means: ‘We are obliged by law to ask you, which we will do as quietly as possible, but we are under absolutely no obligation to pay the blindest bit of notice to what you say.’
My local council here in Sheffield, in common with all the other big cities, is desperately trying to make savings. It needs to find £50m in spending cuts this year on the back of £140m already cut since 2010. The low-hanging fruit has been plucked; now they are lopping off the branches.
One particular measure is causing the council a headache: the removal of concessionary bus passes from children attending the city’s two Catholic secondary schools. The council conducted a rushed consultation before Christmas, posting out letters to parents, cynics believe, during half-term to avoid a head of steam building up to oppose the move during the two-week consultation period.
Nevertheless, the consultation saw 97 per cent of respondents oppose the move, with thousands signing a petition against the cut. A pretty conclusive response, one would think, but the council pushed it through anyway.
That was then. Now, with the threat of judicial review looming, the council is forced to re-run the entire exercise. Again, the public is invited to ‘have its say’, although, again, it is unlikely to see the £250,000 savings the council was looking to make this year.
But we should be grateful for small advances. The last time local government embarked on large, year-on-year cuts, back in the 1980s, there was no need to consult; officers and councillors simply rammed through whatever measures they needed to. The advent of consultation from the 2000 Local Government Act changed all that, but it didn’t go far enough. It failed to make the connection between consulting and acting on the feedback received.
Consultation doesn’t have to be so perfunctory though. Poll after poll shows the public understands the need for cuts, (even if they oppose specific measures), but running consultation exercises that lead people to believe that force of numbers will change the result simply fuels the public’s mistrust of politics.
Perhaps rather than re-heating national squabbles at election time, the local parties could each put forward a clear, costed envelope of spending cuts they would propose to make if they formed an administration? Let’s just abandon the pretence that there will be any return to the years of plenty anytime soon. This would offer the voting public a choice over which cuts they could stomach least and which party was therefore the least worst option.
This would give the winners a clearer mandate for making cuts rather than continually springing one cut after another on a weary electorate that was not discussed or voted for during election campaigns. Indeed, perhaps there should also be the power of recall for councils that make cuts to services for which they have sought no mandate.
Moreover, local authorities should be obliged to log all consultation measures, recording what response their efforts at engaging the public generates and how proposals alter in light of the public having expressed its view. This sort of evaluation is commonplace for nearly everything else these days, so why not with consultation exercises too?
As it stands at the moment, most consultations are simply a waste of officer time – and the electorate’s patience. Surely we can do better.
Kevin Meagher is a former special adviser in the last government and a political blogger
