Originally published 8 November 2015. This article is retained from the tCI archive. Law, policy or practice may have changed since publication.
Consultations have been organised for years. True, a lot of expertise has haemorrhaged away through successive redundancies and reorganisations, but Public services in the UK employ thousands of competent people with extensive experience of organising public engagement and consultations. So it is a bit of a puzzle why so many exercises still run into difficulties, particularly over their timetables.
Recent years have certainly seen changes. There is now rather more uncertainty – and hence debate – over when and to what extent a formal consultation is required. With new technology to the fore, there is more flexibility over its duration and the methodologies being relied upon. Most importantly, however, is the new emphasis on the pre-consultation processes, and specifically on options development. Anyone embarking upon a major consultation today will be approaching the task quite differently from a decade ago.
Because consultations come in so many shapes and sizes, we concluded at the Institute that it would not be possible to recommend a single template Project plan. Clearly the prescriptive provisions of planning legislation create a rather different ‘feel’ to a consultation than, or example a local authority review of its adult social care policy; or an NHS service change proposal affecting primary care. In all those scenarios, the most significant changes lie in the pre-consultation phase – and the type of public or stakeholder involvement that is appropriate and desirable before the wider public is engaged.
The fundamental principles, however remain constant, and experience has shown that the sectoral differences may not be as great as we thought. For the first time, therefore, we have created a standard recommended Project Plan. It contains twelve discrete activities, which are of course inter-related, and our new training course Preparing for a Consultation provides opportunities to work with and test its relevance in different situations. One of its main objectives is to help members and supporters plan the all-important timeline, and it is in this context that the idea of pinch-points is useful. The term is increasingly used by the Highways Agency and other transport and traffic services, but is of wider use to describe a bottleneck, or more accurately, a point at which resources are inadequate for the task in hand.
Looking at a modern consultation, we find three particularly difficult pinch-points that need to be borne in mind when planning a consultation.
Pinch-point One – Stakeholder Involvement in options development
There are still organisations where it is wholly against the grain to involve stakeholders in the development of potential options. The ‘culture of the expert’ can still be found among clinicians in the NHS as much as among civil engineers designing roads.
But modern thinking is all about ensuring that possible solutions are not unreasonably excluded, and co-production ideas have persuaded many to give more than just tokenistic representation on options development groups or committees. Selecting and legitimising who sits around the table is a time-consuming process, and needs a dialogue with a wider stakeholder form of some kind. Few organisations allow enough time – or have the expertise or experience leading to unforeseen delays
Pinch-point Two – Finalising the Consultation ‘narrative’
We no longer rely exclusively on the traditional consultation paper, referred to by many as the ‘big fat document’. But it still plays a critical part in the publication of consultation proposals. With the Courts raising the bar for the Gunning Two principle that sufficient information be available so as to enable ‘intelligent consideration’ by consultees, it gets progressively more difficult to agree precisely what to say and how to say it. Drafts of the consultation paper (rightly) go through many hands before being finalised and organisations regularly underestimate the time required to do this. Internal politics can prolong this stage indefinitely, so we must all be aware of this bottleneck.
Pinch-point Three – Considering the analysis
It is demanding enough to ensure good quality analysis and interpretation of a well-responded consultation. But the days when the data could be packaged in a Report and sent over for decision-makers to consider are coming to an end. It is now necessary to ensure that equalities analyses take full account of what’ s emerged in the consultation. Also, best practice requires the publication of the consultation output so that stakeholders can be satisfied that all relevant arguments have been presented. In Health and Social Care, the findings of the exercise need to be shared with Overview & Scrutiny Committees. In other sectors, it is politically wise to maintain a dialogue with affected stakeholders before the decision is ultimately taken. It all takes time, and where decisions are marginal or controversial, we have to be prepared for decisions to be deferred or for more research to be undertaken
These are not the only stages at which difficulties can arise, but they are among the most frequent causes of unscheduled or unintended delays. Project plans that veer towards optimism may yet turn out well, but that may be the product of good luck rather than good planning. It may be time to take greater care and plan properly.
TRIGGER POINTS
- How well is Project Planning undertaken in your organisation?
- Are these the pinch-points in your organisation? Or are there others?
- The twelve elements of the Institute’s Recommended Consultation Project Plan are considered in detail at the new Preparing for a Public consultation training course. Next course are in Birmingham on 2nd December 2015 and Manchester on 2nd
This is the 285th 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.