Tuesday Topic

Stockbrokers used to say Sell in May and go away. Ministers just publish White Papers, Consultations or Guidelines, leaving those who need to understand and implement them with some weighty holiday reading. In the case of the Empowerment White Paper – Communities in Control – we are meant to believe that the “journey” towards greater […]

Sometimes public policy seems to catch the mood of the moment; often it misses by a mile! What’s about to happen in health and social care in England could emerge as a seminal moment in the annals of public involvement, with implications for virtually every other public service. On the other hand, if Governments continue

2008 is the year when joined-up consultations will finally take off. It would be great if this extended to the whole public sector, but for the moment let’s accept that to do so at local level will be a huge step forward. It is here that consultation fatigue is most evident. Local representative organisations, voluntary

Any analysis of the 99 Topics published by the Institute over the last four years would reveal problems and opportunities in roughly equal measure. The problems are well known, though solutions are more elusive. Too many consultations are ill-thought-through; under-resourced, use the wrong methods, fail to feed back and struggle to have the intended beneficial

A public dialogue is as good as the information upon which it is conducted. So much is self-evident, but observing this mantra is a bit more difficult in the context of controversial consultations. Take last week’s launch of the Heathrow expansion consultation. It is full of technical information, interpretations and analyses thereof. Battle lines have

It might be easy to dismiss much of the Government’s flashy new “empowerment” agenda1 as yet more spin. But, despite being open to criticism, there are some really significant positives in what is now proposed. First, a criticism – we have yet another piece of terminology. We could not find “Empowerment” anywhere in the new

Direct democracy has many enthusiastic fans. They point out that some questions are just too important for elected representatives to decide; constitutional changes are often cited as classic issues of this kind, and the current call for a Referendum on the latest European treaty just reflects some people’s views that it contains proposals whose significance

Make no mistake; this High Court judgment will have a major impact upon the conduct of public debate in the United Kingdom. It’s not that this is the first time that the Courts have intervened when public consultation has been flawed – there have been previous cases – but until now, these were thought to

Many newspapers and even parts of the BBC seem to have decided for themselves that 10 Downing Street’s recent experiments with public participation are nothing but a set of PR gimmicks designed to enliven Tony Blair’s forthcoming departure. But insofar as they represent the application of established forms of civic public participation, albeit in a

When even Blue Peter has to apologise for misleading callers to its show, and virtually every other broadcaster has had to run for cover lest its practices be placed under scrutiny, you can be sure that something pretty rotten has been discovered. And for once it’s not politicians that stand accused of misleading the public!