We've finished listening! – Does social media mark the increasing irrelevance of consultation timescales?

We all know the traditional model of consultation.

A document is launched, a period of time is set and consultees have until the published end-date to respond, answer whatever questions are asked or make their submissions so that the decision-makers can take these views into account. We have a ‘twelve-week rule’ – except it isn’t a rule – just well-established custom and practice, and a recently published set of Government Consultation Principles that waters this down somewhat by saying that, in future, consultation timescales could be anything from 2 weeks to 12.