We are setting the standard for consultation and engagement.
The independent authority on consultation and engagement across the UK: the people public bodies turn to for assurance, training and advice.
For over twenty years, organisations across the UK have looked to the Institute to make engagement fair, lawful and properly listened to: reducing legal, political and reputational risk, and earning public trust.
Recognised from the High Courts to local authorities, the NHS and the wider public sector.
The assurance methodology cited in those judgments was developed by The Consultation Institute. tCI has adopted it in full and continues to maintain it.
The standard
others follow.
For more than twenty years, the Institute has defined what good consultation looks like, and tCI has been its custodian since 2025. Public bodies, regulators and the courts recognise our standards, and we keep advancing them as engagement meets new pressures, from digital participation and AI to tighter budgets and rising public expectations.
“A national body that sets and promotes standards of excellence.”Leicestershire County Council
Nothing was reinvented.
Twenty years of standards do not transfer on paper alone. Three things carried over intact, and they are the reason the work still holds.
The intellectual property
The Code of Practice, the assessment frameworks, the case law catalogue and the editorial standard behind the Library came across whole. None of it was rewritten to suit a change of ownership.
The methodology
The assurance methodology referenced in the High Court is the Institute’s own. tCI adopted it in full, applies the same five phases to the same tests, and continues to maintain it.
The people
The Faculty of Fellows who wrote the standards still steward them. The same practitioners assure the same work, which is why a judgement made in 2019 and one made now rest on the same reasoning.
Four ways we work with you
Independent, evidence-led support at every stage of a consultation, and a membership that keeps you current between them.
Our values
Independence and integrity are the foundation of everything we do, and everything we're building next.
Vision
A world where decisions that affect people are shaped by genuine, well-run engagement.
Standards
Rigorous, evidence-led benchmarks that make consultation fair, transparent and defensible.
Principles
Independence first. We hold no agenda but the integrity of the process itself.
Mission
To raise the quality of consultation everywhere, through assurance, training and advice.
Our Faculty.
Our Faculty of Fellows brings together senior specialists from across the public, health and infrastructure sectors, practitioners who have shaped the field and who continue to set its standards.
Meet the Faculty →Our Fellows are the senior practitioners who set and safeguard the tCI standard. They steward the methodology and lead the most complex, high-stakes work we do: the people organisations turn to when a consultation has to withstand scrutiny.
Where the field
meets itself.
Standards hold only if practitioners keep testing them against live work. We bring that conversation together, in the open, all year round.
Coffee Mornings
Fortnightly online sessions on the judgment, the policy shift or the method everyone is wrestling with. Free to join, and written up afterwards.
See the next session → ii.The Insight Journal
Every session written up and kept on the record, so the thinking stays searchable instead of leaving with the meeting.
Read the Journal → iii.Communities of Interest
Practitioners grouped around the problems they share, from NHS service change to infrastructure consent, comparing notes on what is working.
See the communities →
Independent.
Alongside you.
We work as a critical friend, close enough to understand your context, independent enough to tell you what you need to hear. The result is consultation that earns trust and withstands challenge.
Start a conversation →We work across the NHS, local and central government, emergency services, transport and infrastructure, and regulators.
The Consultation Institute has provided us with such sound advice. Their recommendations have been tremendously helpful.
Let's talk about your consultation
Need assurance, training or advice? The team is ready to help you get it right.
Talk to us →