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Public Consultation Requirements Public sector leaders routinely face a deceptively simple question: does this change require formal public consultation? The answer matters enormously. Consult too little and you risk legal challenge, damaged trust and derailed projects; consult too much and you waste scarce resources on unnecessary process. This guide cuts through the complexity. It explains

Scrapping Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) may look like an efficiency gain – but it risks widening the gap between police and the public. The government’s own figures note turnout and awareness have been “incredibly low” for PCCs, with around 2-in-5 people not even knowing who their PCC is. These challenges, however, don’t stem from

The challenge: 500 identical campaign emails arrive overnight. Most teams either delete them (triggering a Gunning Principle 4 breach) or count each as independent evidence (distorting the analysis). Both approaches create grounds for judicial review. The cost: Wasted consultation effort. Loss of public trust. Legal challenge that exposes your process as arbitrary. What works: Count every submission. Aggregate

The Challenge: Making Change That Sticks You need to transform services. The financial pressures are real, the quality imperatives are clear, and doing nothing isn’t an option. But here’s the problem: a technically sound Case for Change can still fail spectacularly if it hasn’t earned legitimacy with the people it affects. NHS England’s 2025 reforms,

Challenges Consultation analysis gets challenged when you can’t prove you listened fairly. The common failure mode: hundreds of comments reduced to a sentiment percentage (“72% support”) with no clarity on why people objected, what would mitigate the impacts, or how protected groups are affected. Decision-makers can’t act on that. Legal teams flag predetermination risk. And

The Public Sector Equality Duty isn’t optional process theatre. It’s the first place campaign groups and lawyers look when challenging decisions that disadvantage protected groups. In the last 18 months, three cases have fundamentally reshaped what defensible compliance looks like and widened the gap between organisations that treat PSED as a checklist versus those who