Originally published 14 September 2011. This article is retained from the tCI archive. Law, policy or practice may have changed since publication.
Growth is in; the Government needs it badly, and the country as a whole is passionate to avoid another recession. It is the backdrop for the fascinating debate on the new Planning Guidance and its presumption in favour of sustainable development.
In the meantime, 37 Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) in England are gearing up, and using a modest but useful Capacity Fund – offered to “address gaps in intelligence available on business needs”, and to “facilitate business engagement and interaction with the LEP”. So there is hope that they will start delivering on their potential as significant players in economic development. Of course the relationship between public bodies and the private sector has always been a factor in local prosperity, and the business community is vocal in demanding enterprise-friendly Councils. So it is disappointing to see how few public bodies are really good at engaging with this admittedly demanding community.
Consultation is a particular weak spot. Authorities that are adept at securing good levels of participation among children and young people, senior citizens and service users struggle with business – large and small. Response levels to written consultations are tiny; attendance at public meetings virtually zero and where dialogue does happen, business people tend to leave it to their representative bodies such as local Chambers of Commerce, Small Firm Forums or specific trade bodies. One of the more challenging briefs for Chief Officers is to build effective communications channels with business.
This is one of the reasons why the Government is so keen to ensure that the LEPs are led by established industrialists – and that their modus operandi draws more from Tesco than the Town Hall. This should include the way in which they gauge opinion from the thousands of businesses in their areas – not an easy task when LEPs typically cover well over 50,000 enterprises.
Traditional methods won’t work. Business leaders are time-poor, suspicious of (what they perceive to be ...) bureaucracy, and speak a very different language to public-sector-speech. Many of them are politically-apathetic, wary of local community dynamics and keen to avoid inappropriate media exposure. None of this makes them uncommitted citizens – it is just that the world of business works differently; they march to a different drum-beat.
It is a stroke of good fortune therefore that this situation is about to be transformed by the dramatic absorption of new technology and its amazing capacity to let groups coalesce behind ideas and campaigns. We use the term Social Media, but in fact all this means is people adapting business communications technology to share information about their social lives. In fact, much of the functionality was originally developed for commercial/business purposes – and leading-edge firms have been well ahead of public bodies in their use of online technologies.
Business people are comfortable with e-mails, with networking sites, with discussion forums, snap polls and instant reactions. They understand customer panels and user surveys. If public bodies use these techniques skilfully, there is every prospect of engaging more and better. LEPs should spend some of their Capacity money to set up state-of-the-art engagement platforms, and to use social media creatively to lure into dialogue private sector firms that have rarely if ever contributed to local policy-making.
Maybe a good start would be take a long hard look at the way the private sector currently engages with public bodies. It’s not just local authorities; there are issues of concern to business that relate to health, policing, employment, transport and the voluntary/community sector. The combination of Localism and the ‘Big Society’ create conditions where business has an opportunity to have a greater say in what happens to our local economies than ever before. Will the Captains of Industry wish to do this? All we can do is make it as easy as possible for them.
It just means using techniques that are fittest for purpose – including some of the newer instruments in the consultation toolbox. It’s time to get really clued-up on these.
Trigger points
- Has your local LEP done an audit of existing business engagement in your area?
- How does your organisation currently engage with the business community?
- Have you analysed the characteristics of the local business community? Stakeholder mapping works well here.
- Consider attending our forthcoming Seminar on Technologies for Participation
This is the 195th 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