Glossary P

Panels

See Citizens’ Panels

Parish Mapping

See Community Audit

Parish Plans

Externally facilitated mainly by Rural Community Councils (RCCs) they take place within rural communities with typically less than 3,000 residents. The plan tends to take 12 – 18 months to complete and up to 5 years to undertake and achieve actions. The plan will result in detailed actions and priorities for the local community

Parking Lot

Blank poster simply titled Parking Lot where thoughts that might initially seem irrelevant to the engagement can be captured. Suited to any participatory event or activity such as Focus Groups, Exhibitions and Street Consultations

Participation

1. Efforts that people make in order to influence public policy decisions

2. A social process through which people are able to influence and share control over the decisions which affect them

Participation, Bottom-up

Creation of new empowered social groups

Participation, Top-down

Opening-up of existing government structures to greater public involvement

Participation-led Consultation

Where the main objective is to secure the greatest possible number and quality of respondents in a consultation exercise.

Participatory Action Research (PAR)

Research that involves all relevant parties in actively examining together current action (which they experience as problematic) in order to change and improve it. Research in PAR is ideally by  the local people and for  the local people. Research is designed to address specific issues identified by local people, and the results are directly applied to the problems at hand.

Participatory Appraisal Techniques

A selection of approaches that enable local people to identify their own priorities and make their own decisions about the future with the organising party facilitating, listening and learning.

Participatory Budgeting

Engages with local people to take decisions on the spending priorities for a part of a public budget in their local area. It must be conducted on an inclusive basis, and can help bring about a change in the relationship between communities, elected councillors and local authorities. The Local Government White Paper identified PB as a key tool for empowering local people and this was reinforced in the recently launched Community Empowerment Action Plan  

• Also known as Community Kitties

Participatory Strategic Planning

A consensus-building approach that enables a community or group to articulate together how they would like their community or organisation to develop over the next few years.

See also Visioning

Participatory Theatre

See Theatre

Piloting

The technique of trying out changes in small areas, or a small number of respondents,  to test whether those changes are likely to work for the whole service.

Planning Aid

Planning Aid  has been at the forefront of engaging communities in the planning process. Now Planning Aid is working to further widen engagement in the planning process and to give an equal voice to all those involved in planning. It provides free, independent and professional help, advice and support on planning issues to people and communities who cannot afford to hire a planning consultant. Planning Aid complements the work of local authorities but is wholly independent. of them.

Planning Cells (German Model)

A set of temporary citizens’ panels containing about 25 randomly selected citizens each, convened simultaneously in different locations to consider the same public issue. They study the issue, interview experts and each come up with recommendations which are collected, compared and then compiled into one "citizen report" that is cleared through the participants before being delivered to the convener and the media

Planning for Real

Involves the construction of a large ‘model’ of the area concerned. Both maps and 3-D models can be used.

Note:

• Also known as Plan Your Community

Polls

See Deliberative Polls also Opinion Polls

Pre-Consultation

Discussions which take place between a consultor and key stakeholders with a view to clarifying the issues and determining the scope of a forthcoming consultation.

Primary Consultation

Any consultation being conducted with a view to influencing a decision policy or programme, and not occasioned by the need to submit a response to another consultation exercise

See also Secondary Consultation

Prioritisation Matrix

A technique used to achieve consensus within a specific group of participants about an issue. The matrix helps rank problems or issues (usually generated through brainstorming or other techniques) by a particular criterion that is important to the project, as defined by the participants. This allows participants to clearly see which issues are the most important to work on solving first. Prioritisation matrices are used to determine what participants consider to be the most pressing issues.

Priority Search

A computer-aided survey process combining qualitative and quantitative techniques, aimed at improving the performance of an organisation by giving the people surveyed the chance to identify their needs and wants, and state their priorities.

Probability Sampling

See Sampling

Process

See Consultation Process

Process benchmarking

A form of benchmarking which is a comparison of the cross-related processes used by different organisations.

Projective and enabling techniques

A wide range of tasks and games in which respondents can be asked to participate during an interview or group, designed to facilitate, extend or enhance the nature of the discussion.

Public Deliberation

Public deliberation is one name for the way we go about deciding how to act. In weighing - together - the costs and consequences of various approaches to solving problems, people become aware of the differences in the way others see those costs and consequences. That enables them to find courses of action that are consistent with what is valuable to the community as a whole. In that way the public can define the public's interests - issue by issue (David Mathews and Noelle McAfee, Making Choices Together)

Public Engagement

A process that encourages substantive deliberation in a community.

Notes:

• The term covers a wide variety of practices, of which consultation is one
• The Ladder of Participation illustrates how different forms of engagement relate to each other, though many of the practices could apply to engagement in specific businesses or professional communities – and not just to the general public

Public Meeting

A dialogue method, whereby members of the general public are invited by the consultor (or his/her agent) without restriction, to an event organised to discuss issues of relevance.

See also Limited Public Meeting

Public Policy Consultation

Where consultors initiate a consultation process on aspects of legislation, regulation, funding or administration of activities initiated by Government or its agencies.