Do Guidelines Work? – Do we successfully change behaviour by publishing advice and guidance?

If you work in the general field of public participation, chances are that your organisation has issued some form of Guidelines to help you do your job. They may not be called Guidelines, and may take the style of a Framework, a Policy document or even a Code of Practice, but they all share the characteristic that they have been helpfully drafted by someone who wants to set parameters for the way certain tasks are undertaken.

In some professions – like town planning, such Guidelines become elevated into tablets of stone; in others they are just regarded as ornamental adornments to the municipal mood-music.

Guideline authors often face a dilemma, and have to consider whether their job is to act as a prop for those who need help just to stand up, or a chain to restrain the over-confident from straying too far. Striking a balance between these two approaches is difficult, with the risk that one pleases neither group. No matter whether you are a Government agency, a County Council, a Police force or a NHS Trust; if you put pen to paper to advise your staff how to undertake public engagement, this is a tightrope you have to negotiate.

Right now, this kind of debate is taking place in two Whitehall departments.