Apathy – real or imagined? - Do few participants indicate a lack of interest or a lack of competence?

A few days ago, one of our Regional newspapers gleefully reported that ‘political apathy has reached a new low’. The headline said Less than 0.01% of ... voters responded to a major consultation on elected mayors. Smack! Another strike for the cynics who despise public consultation!

Unfortunately, on this occasion the facts are about as depressing as can be. Even allowing for the folly of running the consultation over the summer holidays a grand total of 19 responses is appallingly low. The Council points out that it made background papers available online and also in the reception areas of Council offices and its one-stop shop. But none of this passes muster at a time when progressive authorities accept that the onus is on them to stimulate effective dialogues. The interesting point is that there are issues where, try as hard as they can, public bodies struggle to generate interest in particular subjects. There are several scenarios which pose a challenge of this kind:- ? Issues of technical complexity that lie outside most people’s comfort zone ? Matters of importance, but buried inside institutional or organisational structures to which people have difficulty relating ? Matters of potential interest but unlikely in practice to have significant bearing upon the lives of consultees

Consultations in these situations demand a touch of flair and imagination, but they also need the rigour of a process that includes a proper analysis and mapping of stakeholders. Only after that is done can there be a reasonable attempt at selecting dialogue methods that will reach them. All sorts of local organisations would potentially have been impacted by a decision to opt for a directly-elected Mayor, and they should have been engaged in dialogue. Ditto with local business. As it is all about future governance – schools and young people might have been targeted. Sadly, in the case of the 19 respondents, there is little evidence that anything of the kind was done. If it was, it didn’t work!

Most disturbingly, however, those who organised this particular consultation were content to accept its findings, report it to the Council and indeed make a recommendation without even the slightest acknowledgement that maybe the public never really got to express a view. From outside it looks as if the Council was quite happy to accept a verdict of apathy – maybe – who knows – it may have supported a predisposition in favour of the status-quo?

But we must be careful to distinguish between a genuine lack of interest – and situations where the views of people just have not found expression. If ever we needed to be convinced of the case for the new ‘duty to promote democracy’, this incident surely provides proof. The Local Democracy Bill – which contains the new provision, has had its critics, but as long as there are Councils that seem content to accept a poor turnout on a clearly significant issue without questioning its own methodologies, there needs to be some legal inducement to do better.

We know that the actual % committed to influencing local issues is low. MORI estimated it to be no more than 3 – 5% a few years ago. But on that calculation, between 6,000 and 10,000 residents might have had an opinion about the future governance of this Council. On any reasonable interpretation, it should go back and repeat the exercise – this time doing it properly.

There is only one other interpretation for what has happened – and that is an even worse proposition. People might just be so lacking in any faith that the Authority would listen that they have decided en masse to ignore the debate. We know that public confidence and trust in our public bodies may be at an all-time low, but surely not quite as low as this. Were this to be the case, it would be frightening!

In any event, this should be an object lesson to us all. If the public appear apathetic, look in the mirror! Are we responsible?

And can we fix it?

Trigger points

• Examine closely any consultations that had particularly low responses, or ask for independent advice as to whether they were effectively made visible to key stakeholders
• Note the Local Democracy Bill and its two key new ‘duties’? There is an opportunity to look at the duty to respond to petitions at the specialist Roundtable – Petitions in Practice (with Public-i)

This is the 144th Tuesday Topic; a full list of subjects covered is available for Institute members and is a valuable resource covering so many aspects of consultation and engagement