Originally published 1 December 2009. This article is retained from the tCI archive. Law, policy or practice may have changed since publication.
In almost six years of writing these Topics we have probably enthused about consultation without acknowledging that there are times when the best advice is, Don’t do it!
Some of these are pretty obvious. If you recently asked people their views but nothing much happened, it’s a waste of time to repeat the exercise. Maybe it was someone else; another agency perhaps, possibly with a different agenda, but still with access to your customers or stakeholders. Even if it kept the resulting data to itself when this could have been shared ... tough! Don’t duplicate! More frequently, consultation is misused by those who wish to avoid or postpone difficult decisions. Superficially, it sounds quite clever to assert the need to consult the public one more time ... just to make absolutely sure that all the necessary views have been heard. The phrase kicking it into the long grass comes to mind. It buys time, but can also buy trouble. Extending the period of debate beyond its natural lifespan rarely produces anything new or original. In a divisive issue, positions become even further entrenched, and rarely does it make the eventual decision easier. More insidiously, it undermines confidence. Leaders don’t enhance their reputations by avoidable delays. Don’t prevaricate!
Sometimes an issue cries out for debate and dialogue; everyone has an opinion and our bars and restaurants resonate with discussion on the topic. The trouble is there may be little or nothing a particular agency can do about it. It may not have the power - or the money - or the management capability. When public agencies seek the views of its citizens it implies that it has the capacity to act upon what is heard. In this way, it creates an expectation and there is little more corrosive to public confidence than to suggest something that can’t be delivered. Don’t tease the electorate!
There is a temptation on occasions to go through the motions in the hope that key stakeholders will appreciate the gesture of being invited to contribute their opinions. Decisions may not exactly be cast in stone, but there is little or no intention of yielding much influence to those whom specialists may consider unqualified to express a view. The so-called ‘culture of the expert’ is alive and well in many professions, certain that they know best but wise enough to know that a failure to engage will be criticised. Some of the resulting consultations look good, but may just amount to tokenism. Don’t patronise!
Say nothing of technical issues where the consultation is only meaningful to a small number of well-informed groups, and where extending it high wide and handsome is a strange form of political correctness. Disregard also those situations where opposing views are well defined and where the parties would spend their time better actively negotiating the best outcome that’s possible. Making an unnecessary mountain of what ought to be molehills is a form of vanity engagement. Don’t exaggerate!
All these however, pale to insignificance alongside the biggest mistake of all – organising a consultation when the decision has already been taken. This wastes everyone’s time and money, but the true damage occurs in creating the impression of listening when there’s nothing to influence. The irony is that many of those who organise such exercises know perfectly well that they’re perpetrating a fraud on consultees. They know perfectly well that the choices have already been made and that those who respond are just taking part in a kind of ritual dance whereby the process becomes all-important and the substance subsides into an irrelevance. What is their defence? Ah, they say. We know it’s wrong, and we wouldn’t do it ... but we have to by law, you see, and they point to several statutory provisions that insist on consultation. Section 242 of the NHS Act 2006 is a case in point.
We used to sympathise with officials in their predicament. How unreasonable of Parliamentarians not to realise that decisions had to be taken, and that you can’t always make them look better with a dollop of public engagement? But on deeper thinking, we have concluded that what our legislators had in mind was obliging civil servants and public agencies to reach out for their stakeholders’ views before making up their minds. What’s been going wrong is that consultation is tagged on afterwards and that listening needs to happen much earlier. So don’t be late!
Trigger points
- Have you the procedures to avoid overlapping or duplicated consultations?
- Can you dissuade senior decision-makers from using consultation to postpone difficult decisions?
- Do you plan to review your 2010 consultation programme to look for opportunities to save money by being selective in which consultations to undertake?
- All these issues are considered extensively in The Art of Consultation, the new book by Rhion Jones & Elizabeth Gammell. More information on the Institute's website.
This is the 150th 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