Article

When consultation actually changes the decision: the Oxfordshire fire service case

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Oxfordshire County Council is set to consider revised fire and rescue proposals after a consultation that produced significant changes: no station closures, the Thame proposal withdrawn, and the north Oxford plan paused. For consultation practitioners, the question is not whether the politics worked out. It is whether the process remained genuinely capable of changing the […]

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Planning Consultation Requirements: Are Councils Ready?

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England’s planning reforms are not just about speeding up decisions. They are changing who is accountable for how consultation is conducted, how representations are handled, and how that evidence withstands scrutiny. Three specific changes create immediate legal and governance exposure for local planning authorities that have not updated their processes. The reform direction across development

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Legitimate Expectation: When a Promise to Consult Creates a Legal Duty

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Public bodies sometimes promise to consult. Sometimes they have always consulted in the past. Does either of those facts create a legal obligation to consult again? The doctrine of legitimate expectation says it can, but the courts set the bar high, and the gap between what practitioners assume will count and what actually does is

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Why public consultation and engagement are risk management issues, not communications ones

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Too many organisations still treat consultation as a late-stage exercise in explanation. They prepare the message, publish a survey, and hope that visible activity will reduce opposition. That approach is weak on both law and governance. A consultation that begins after minds are made up is exposed from the start. The Gunning principles, the legal test

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Is public consultation enough? What Wales found

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A Welsh Government advisory group published its progress report on democratic renewal in Wales this month. Buried in the detail is a pointed observation about public consultation: that it is “rarely sufficient and hugely overused.” We think that deserves a closer look. What did the Welsh Government’s advisory group actually say? The Innovating Democracy Advisory Group (IDAG),

Is public consultation enough? What Wales found Read More »

Pre-Election Period: Can You Still Run a Public Consultation?

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We published an earlier version of this article in 2019 under the title “Will purdah affect your consultation?” The underlying legal position has not changed. The terminology has. With local elections in May 2026 approaching, this is a good moment to update both. What has changed, and why does the name matter? The word “purdah”

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Section 114 Notices and Consultation: What the Law Requires

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A Section 114 notice is a statutory declaration that a council cannot balance its budget under the Local Government Finance Act 1988. It triggers an immediate prohibition on new expenditure beyond statutory services, requires the full council to meet within 21 days to consider the officer’s report, and typically brings government commissioners into the picture. What it

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What makes a Statement of Community Involvement defensible

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A Statement of Community Involvement (SCI) is a document submitted alongside a planning application that records what engagement took place before submission, who was consulted, what they said, and how their input shaped the final proposals. The term has a dual use in planning. Local planning authorities (LPAs) are required to publish their own SCI

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Legitimate Expectation in Public Consultation: The Legal Risk Hidden in Your Own Words

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Public bodies are generally aware that they can be challenged for running a bad consultation. Fewer are aware that they can be challenged for failing to consult at all, on the basis of something they said. That is the doctrine of legitimate expectation. It is not obscure. It has shaped significant judicial review decisions over

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