APPENDIX 2
Memorandum by the London Borough of Barnet
We are pleased to respond to your invitation to submit
evidence to the Committee.
The first paper below sets out details of some
of the specific initiatives undertaken by Barnet Council in order
to increase and improve our dialogue with local people. It is
not exhaustive and there are many others, including our website,
our annual Environment Conference, our Youth Advisory Committees
and others. If the Committee would find it helpful we would be
pleased to provide further details of these.
The second paper has been prepared by our Head
of Public Consultation and contains his thoughts on some of the
issues which you will be considering. He is currently undertaking
a PhD on Relationship Marketing and Local Government, and has
studied some of these issues. We are happy to support the submission
of this paper to you.
Please contact me if you would like any further
information of if we can be of help in any way.
Rita Dexter
Director of Community Development
BARNET'S CITIZENS' PANEL
Barnet set up their Citizens' Panel in November
1997.
SAMPLE COMPOSITION
The panel is made up of 1,000 electors selected
at random from the electoral register. They are representative
of the adult population of the whole of the borough.
SET-UP
COSTS
The set-up cost of the panel was approximately
£10,000. It was originally thought that we would put the
set up of the panel out to an external company, but it proved
to be too expensive. Our Computer Department set up a programme
to select 10,000 residents from the electoral register at random
and also set up an initial recruitment database in MS Access.
Approximately 1,500 people accepted our initial invitation to
join the panel. The recruitment database was then sent to the
external company who used this to match returned recruitment questionnaires
and set up the panel database.
The recruitment questionnaire was designed,
printed and despatched using internal resources.
RUNNING COSTS—ANNUALLY
— Two omnibus surveys a year (financed
centrally)—£8,314
— Newsletter (three a year)—
£2,820
— Recruitment-maintenance—
£4,858
PANEL USES
— Omnibus surveys
— Ad hoc surveys
ADVANTAGES OF
THE CITIZENS'
PANEL
— It provides a ready made borough-wide
sample to consult on key issues rather than having to recruit
each time on a one off basis which makes it very cost effective
in the long term.
— As well as being used for one off consultations,
the panel can also be used to see how people's views change over
time on particular issues.
— The panellists have all volunteered
to talk to us about our services and other matters of local interest.
This means we get a much better than average response to requests
for information or invitations to focus groups or deliberative
workshops.
— The sample size of the panel means
that, with a typical response rate of 65 per cent, any percentages
of error derived from Panel data will be subject to a margin of
error of no more than four per cent either way, and often less
than that.
— As we have the addresses of all panellists
we can do area or ward analysis.
— If we are in a hurry we can commission
a telephone poll using the panel.
— We try and use the panel to encourage
partnerships with other public sector agencies. Barnet Health
Authority has already used the panel twice.
— The panel can be used as a control
for other surveys carried out.
— The panel involves a relatively large
number of people—if a third are rotated each year this will
help create a "habit of citizenship" among Barnet's
residents.
DISADVANTAGES OF
THE CITIZENS'
PANEL
The following issues must be considered when
establishing a panel:
— Survey topics need to be identified
well in advance by the council and/or its partners and the surveys
must be undertaken at regular intervals.
— If the questionnaire changes too
much the possibility of assessing changes in attitudes through
comparative studies over time is restricted, if not lost. Keeping
changes to a minimum with an annual review of all questions, for
example, should limit the impact on comparative studies.
— The major difficulty, once the panel
has been recruited, is keeping such a large group going and ensuring
it remains representative.
When maintaining a panel the following issues
need to be addressed:
Drop out rate
The Panel experiences a drop out rate of at
least 10 per cent annually. Though the panel reduces naturally
in size other factors may influence this, for example, lack of
interest from members, ineffective feedback of survey results
and panel members that move out of the area.
Unrepresentative of the population
Due to the drop out rate the panel is susceptible
to becoming unrepresentative of the population. Particular attention
is required when recruiting the replacement proportion so as to
match the demographic profile of the whole population of the borough.
Withdrawals
Panel members may withdraw whilst in the middle
of conducting a survey thereby affecting the response rate. Bradford
Council includes a section in every questionnaire which gives
the member an opportunity to resign from the panel. This informs
the Council immediately of any changes and saves on cost.
Selection of new panel members
As the panel membership decreases over time
additional recruitment must take place so that the panel remains
representative of the population. Recruitment for new panel members
takes place on a yearly basis.
Expert panel members
If panel members are allowed to remain on the
panel continuously there is a high probability that they will
become experts on council services. As a consequence, the panel
soon becomes unrepresentative and aspirations of members could
be out of line with the population as a whole as they become knowledgeable
about council services. Barnet has decided that panel members
will have to resign after three years and we are therefore planning
to replace a third of the panel each year. This overcomes the
problem of "panel experts".
Voluntarism
Although panel members are selected to be representative
of the total electorate in demographic terms, they share one characteristic
that makes them atypical—they are sufficiently interested
in local affairs to make a commitment to being surveyed on a regular
basis. This puts them in a minority of between 10 per cent and
20 per cent of the population (see comment in the personal perspective,
attached). There is no easy solution to this problem, but it needs
to be borne in mind when assessing panel findings.
AREA FORUMS
Barnet Council has become one of the first authorities
in the country to respond to the government's call to modernise
local government and set up a totally new decision-making structure.
At the heart of this new structure are Area
Forums which provide a platform for all residents to have their
say on any aspect of council services and to comment on council
plans and proposals before decisions are made. Local government
must listen to its communities and the new Area Forums provide
residents with the opportunity to tell the council their views
on services.
Many issues raised by residents are relevant
to where they live, rather than the borough as a whole. In response
to this the council takes its Area Forum meetings out into the
community, they are not based at the main council buildings.
The Forums are chaired by local councillors
and council officers also attend. There is no set agenda and the
Chair takes contributions from the floor in order to decide what
will be discussed, depending on what issues residents wish to
raise. The Chair also reports back on what has happened with problems
or issues raised at the last meeting.
Area Forums have been a success story in Barnet.
Each meeting is regularly attended by over 50 residents, and in
some cases, over 100. Feedback from residents has been extremely
positive. They welcome being able to talk to officers and councillors
directly, and about issues relating to the area where they live.
Drawbacks are that some residents who wish to
raise personal issues do not feel able to do so in the environment
of the Area Forum. The meetings also find it difficult to engage
with some policy or strategic issues, such as the Unitary Development
Plan for example, which the council would like to raise with residents.
Other methods have to be found to complement the Forums in these
cases.
FOCUS GROUPS
Service areas within the council regularly use
focus groups, formed from local residents, to discuss and get
views on a particular service or issue. The groups are generally
made up of members of the council's Citizens Panel, which allow
the focus groups to be representative of the borough's population.
These are extremely useful in exploring the breadth of views,
attitudes, behaviour or motives, and have proved a valuable tool
in helping to focus services on the needs of residents. They are
a key part of Barnet's consultation in connection with Best Value.
The council has used focus groups to discuss
its complaints procedures, community care, children's services,
refuse collection, traffic, transport, parking and trading standards,
to name but a few. The only drawback of using focus groups is
that one cannot be 100 per cent sure the results are typical of
the majority of residents. Focus groups also need to be managed
by trained facilitators. Focus groups can otherwise be easily
dominated by two or three residents, who do not give anyone else
the chance to give their opinion.
BUDGET CONSULTATION
At the beginning of January 1999 the council
consulted on its budget for the first time on a borough-wide basis.
Unlike other authorities Barnet did not ask any specific questions
on whether the council tax should go up, down or remain the same,
but based the consultation on the council's corporate themes.
The council wanted to give residents every opportunity
to have their say and devised a number of consultation methods
to enable this to happen. These were electronic voting (Powervote);
questionnaire to all households in the borough; the council's
website; roadshows in public areas and presentations to organisations
and groups in the borough.
Barnet Council was the first authority in England
and Wales to use Powervote machines to record the views of residents.
These have previously only been used for elections. The Powervote
machines were placed in public venues such as supermarkets, shopping
centres and libraries and staffed by officers from the council.
Our experience was that these machines have
a great deal to offer for voting purposes, ie elections, referendums
or some local consultations where there are simple choices to
be made, but that they lend themselves less well to public consultations
of a more complex nature. We will not be using the Powervote machines
for consultations again in the near future, but this is for budgetary
reasons not because of dissatisfaction with the technology.
Additionally leaflets with a questionnaire were
distributed to every single household in the borough as well as
being placed in libraries and council offices.
Finally the council used its website to promote
the consultation, with visitors to the site able to complete the
questionnaire on-line.
A borough-wide consultation requires a great
deal of preparation and co-ordination and can be costly, especially
in officers' time. In general no authorities which consult on
their budget get a response rate of over 2 per cent, a typical
figure for such a large consultation. To try and encourage a better
response on its next budget consultation, Barnet Council intends
to focus more on the roadshows in public venues as a way of meeting
residents who live in the borough at first hand.
The implications of innovatory consultation and
participation techniques for representative government and the
potential for such innovations to strengthen the democratic process
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
OF THE
PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE
BY JOHN
MAY
Consultation has at least four different rationales:
— Public service orientation.
— Education in citizenship.
All four are valid, and consultation should
be promoted vigorously, despite the danger that different players
might have different understandings of what is involved in a consultation
exercise.
Participation is not the same as consultation,
which is one rung on the ladder of participation.
Participation in government is a minority interest,
and it is unrealistic to expect to change this overnight. Nonetheless,
a strategy is put forward for encouraging participation, particularly
in local government.
John May
7 December 1999
The implications of innovatory consultation and
participation techniques for representative government and the
potential for such innovations to strengthen the democratic process
A personal perspective by John May, Corporate
Public Consultation Officer, London Borough of Barnet, and PhD
student at Middlesex University Business School.
CONSULTATION
Consultation can serve a variety of different
political objectives equally well—of itself consultation
is "theory-neutral".
The drive towards a more active engagement of
people in their local state, whether as service users or as local
citizens, is stronger now than ever before . . . whether the concern
is with better services, individual rights, public accountability
or democratisation, encouraging and establishing people's involvement
is central to them all. (Chelliah, 1995, p3).
There are at least four different rationales
for consultation:
— Public service orientation.
— Education in citizenship.
Each rationale leads to a different conclusion
about the scope and application of consultation.
Consumerism
Consumerism, using consultation as market research,
is the dominant mode in local government at present, and set to
grow even more dominant. Characteristic techniques include Citizens
Panels, focus groups, resident surveys and other types of customer
satisfaction survey, including mystery shopping where it is practised.
The arguments for using market research are
linked to Public Choice theory, which sees local government as
the provider of basic services and nothing more. On this basis,
the role of the member of the public is as consumer of public
services rather than citizen.
Whether or not one accepts this limited vision
of the role of local government, the argument for using customer
experiences and attitudes to provide services that are more in
tune with what the service users actually want is a very compelling
one.
Indeed it is possible to argue (May and Newman,
1999) that marketing itself, not just market research should be
a new organising principle for local government. If this comes
about, then market research will become more prominent than it
is now, and consultation will become accepted as an integral part
of service planning and provision.
Democracy
Consultation can also be seen as a practical
expression of direct democracy. Consultation, on this view, empowers
the citizen and gives him/her a direct say in the decisions that
are taken, cutting out the middleman. At the same time there is
nowadays
no longer a presumption in favour of the institutional
framework of local government as a promoter of democratic accountability.
The very idea of local democracy is changing from one of simply
political representation (indirect democracy) to one that also
includes universal individual participation in decision-making
(direct democracy). (Bailey, 1993, p9)
On the other hand, it is questionable whether
this is what people actually want. The "contemporary theory
of democracy" is characterised by the competition of leaders
(elites) for the votes of the people at periodic, free elections.
(Pateman, 1970)
In between elections the elites are expected
to get on with the business of governing and running services,
and they are not expected to keep returning to the people and
effectively asking for direction. Most local government consulters
will be familiar with the sentiment that "we elected the
councillors and now we expect them to go away and do the job we
pay them for".
On this reading, consultation needs to be kept
at a fairly low level. Indeed, Pateman points up the apparent
paradox that
for the democratic system to remain stable, the
level of participation by the majority should not rise much above
the minimum necessary to keep the democratic method (electoral
machinery) working. (Pateman, 1970. p14)
In other words, too much consultation can upset
the prevailing pattern of periodic competition between elites.
Market research is tolerable, but there is the ever present danger
of "raising public expectations", by planting the idea
that the public are entitled to something more than the elite
is willing (or able?) to deliver.
Public service orientation
The dominant ethos in local government is traditionally
that of public service, which Kieron Walsh defined as
. . . based upon the simple idea that local authorities
should provide services for and with people not simply to them
. . . It is not for the professionals alone to decide that a service
is needed, how it is to be provided, and whether needs have been
met; the wants of citizens, and their judgements on the adequacy
of service are at least as important as those of the experts.
(Walsh, 1989, p6)
The role of consultation in this setting is
quasi-political. It can be used to give a voice to the less powerful
groups in society such as women, black and minority ethnic people,
those with disabilities, older people and lesbians and gay men.
This kind of consultation is a deliberate attempt
to redress the political balance of power in favour of the more
marginalised, and it is intuitively appealing as a mechanism to
both Members and officers who possess a public service orientation.
But public service carries the connotation of
service of collective rather than individual interests. This dovetails
rather neatly with the idea of consulting with groups (of marginalised
people) rather than with the individuals themselves.
The advantage of relying on a group such as
one of these is that the hard work of identifying a target population,
bringing it together and establishing a consensus view for onward
transmission to the Council has already been taken care of by
someone else.
The scope for councils to build and maintain
an ongoing relationship with people who are self organised in
voluntary groups is much greater than it could ever be with individual
members of the public (Chelliah, 1995, p6)
The drawback is of course the question mark
over the representativeness of views that have been refracted
through several layers of voluntary sector bureaucracy.
Education in citizenship
In English local government elections only some
40 per cent of citizens vote, compared with turnouts in the 80s
and 90s in countries such as Belgium, Denmark, Italy and Luxembourg
(Rallings, Thrasher and Downe, quoted in Corbett and Murray, 1997).
In addition some groups such as the middle classes appear to benefit
disproportionately from publicly provided services (Bailey, 1993).
There is a strong case to be made for more or
less anything which increases citizen involvement, and in particular
for increasing turnout at elections. It can be argued that consulting
people will lead to an increase in their level of involvement
and consequently an increase in their willingness to vote.
However, there is little evidence that this
actually happens. Consultation has been steadily increasing over
the last couple of decades, while electoral turnout has been falling.
Perhaps the public dissociates consultation from citizen involvement,
so that there is little or no carry over from the one activity
to the other.
Despite this, the experience of attending a
public meeting (particularly one where the subject under discussion
is a controversial one) can make one long for more education in
citizenship. The newer, more sophisticated forms of public consultation,
such as citizens' juries and deliberative polls, offer some hope
of educating at least some members of the public in techniques
of consensus building and conflict resolution. Hopefully these
will ultimately lead to a raising in the standard of public debate—and
maybe to increased electoral turnout!
Conclusions
The chameleon quality of consultation, enabling
it to take on a variety of colourings, is a great strength. It
means that it is relatively easy to promote the idea, and this
can and should be done as vigorously as possible. All four rationales
outlined earlier can contribute to the democratic process, regardless
of one's stance on consultation.
The drawback is that confusion can arise, and
the promoters of consultation can have one rationale in mind,
while the consultees can have another. This is particularly noticeable
in certain public meetings, where the promoters intend a consumerist
style airing of views, but the audience believes they are taking
part in a binding referendum.
PARTICIPATION
The terms "consultation" and "participation"
are often linked together, as if they were interchangeable. There
is in fact a profound difference between the two with participation
being the generic term for a differentiated series of activities,
often referred to as the "ladder of participation",
with consultation as one of the rungs on the ladders.
The ladder itself originated with Shelley Arnstein
in 1989, but has been modified and adapted to the UK context several
times since. David Riley prepared the attached diagram for the
Local Government Management Board.
It is an open question whether most people actually
want to participate in government. Response rates to consultation
exercises on new council structures can be as low as one per cent,
which hardly suggests a burning interest. Low electoral turnouts
and the reported difficulty some areas have in finding enough
volunteers to stand for election to vacant Council seats also
suggest a generally low level of desire to participate.
Pateman argues that this is not to be wondered
at:
. . . "participation", so far as the
majority is concerned, is participation in the choice of decision-makers.
Therefore the function of participation . . . is solely a protective
one; the protection of the individual from arbitrary decisions
by elected leaders and the protection of his private interests.
(Pateman, 1970, p14)
The Local Government Centre at Warwick Business
School commissioned a survey of 2,488 adult residents in 42 local
authorities. One of the findings of this survey was that just
over a fifth (21 per cent) of interviewees said that they would
like to have more of a say in what the Council does, and the services
it provides. (Martin et al, 1998)
"Having a say" can mean many different
things. If we take willingness to join a citizens panel as a measure
of commitment to participation, then the evidence from Barnet
(15 per cent acceptance rate) and other local authorities is that
no more than 10 per cent to 20 per cent of the population is willing
to make even this fairly low key kind of commitment.
Conclusions
It seems unrealistic to expect that a deep-seated
attitude such as reluctance to participate in government can be
changed overnight. That is not to say that we should do nothing.
At the least we can make it easier for the minority to engage
with the processes of government.
An outline strategy for doing this is as follows:
— Assume that some people will graduate
from consultation to participation if it is made possible for
them to do so. With this in mind, promote consultation on every
practical occasion.
— Keep records of the people who respond
to consultations, and send them invitations to more participative
activities.
— Use spontaneous campaigns on local
issues to "recruit" the more active local residents
into something more enduring than a one-off campaign. (Although
there needs to be some kind of locally based participation structure
in place already if this is to work.)
— Develop cross-referrals from one
kind of participative activity to another. Local Agenda 21 Partnerships,
community development schemes, tenant participation initiatives,
citizens' juries and Residents Associations all offer scope for
cross-referrals and overlapping memberships.
— Make greater use of the more participative
and empowering forms of consultation, such as citizens' juries
and deliberative polls. (For more details, see Professor John
Stewart's series of papers on Innovation in Democratic Practice.)
— Devolve local government decision-making
by allocating real money to local groups. There is no better way
to demonstrate a commitment to encouraging participation—subject
of course to the necessary safeguards when dealing with public
money.
— Look outside the local authority
as well as within it. Both the Health Service and the Police,
to name but two other local services, have a strong commitment
to consultation and, increasingly, to participation.
— Recognise that for some of us government
is a full-time preoccupation, but for most it is a part-time interest.
Legitimise and facilitate patterns of dropping into and out of
participation.
— Use Councils of Voluntary Service
to advise on, or to deliver this kind of strategy for participation.
The voluntary sector has years of experience of working with people
whose commitment and availability fluctuates, and who cannot be
compelled.
— Encourage greater participation in
other walks of life. In schools, for instance, and in the workplace.
There is evidence to show that the effect is cumulative, and that
more participation in one area leads to a greater sense of "political
efficacy" in others as well. (Pateman, 1970, p50).
John May
7 December 1999
REFERENCES
Bailey, S J (1993) "Public choice theory
and the reform of government in Britain: from government to governance"
Public Policy and Administration 8 (2), p7-24.
Chelliah, R (1995) Consulting and Involving
the Public: good practice in local authorities London: LGIU.
Corbett, D & Murray, H (1997) Towards
Democratic Renewal: Fife Council's Citizenship Commission and
Citizens Jury Glenrothes: Fife Council.
Martin, S et al (1998) "best Value Baseline
Report" Warwick Business School/ DETR Best value Paper
Number 4 Warwick: Local Government Centre, University of Warwick.
May, J and Newman, K (1999) "Marketing:
A New Organising Principle for Local Government?" Local
Government Studies 25 (3), p16-35
Pateman, C (1970) Participation and Democratic
Theory Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
Riley, D Customer-Citizen Involvement
Luton: LGMB, Introduction.
Stewart, J (1995) Innovation in Democratic
Practice Birmingham: Institute of Local Government Studies,
University of Birmingham.
Stewart, J (1996) Further Innovation in Democratic
Practice Birmingham: Institute of Local Government Studies,
University of Birmingham.
Walsh, K (1989) Marketing in Local Government
Harlow: Longman with LGTB.
THE SEVEN-RUNG LADDER OF PARTICIPATION
Adapted from:
David Riley for the Local Government Management
Board. Luton, no date
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