Were it not for BREXIT, this would have been the big story of the week. Theresa May probably wishes it was. Which is why, just maybe, a consultation about more effective joint working to tackle violent crime somehow became a dispute about blaming teachers and doctors for failing to spot potential criminals.

The consultation, on … ‘A new legal duty to support a multi-agency approach to preventing and tackling serious violence.’  was published on 1 April by the Home Office and proposes no such thing. Was the story ‘spun’ as raw meat for a tabloid press that quite likes blaming social workers and do-gooders for anything going wrong? Or was it a misunderstanding because reading the consultation document makes it quite difficult to work out what the proposals mean in practice?

From a consultation point of view, here are five points worth considering

1. The document makes a strong case for what is now called a public health approach to tackling violent crime and quotes existing initiatives in Scotland and Wales with approval. In practice it means joined-up working between various public bodies, and the thrust of this consultation is to seek views on how to make that better. It notes that, in England, partnership machinery already exists, and cites …
a. Community Safety Partnerships
b. Local Safeguarding Children’s Boards – just abolished!
c. Serious Organised Crime Partnerships
d. Health and Wellbeing Boards
In the small print you will find a half-admission that some of these don’t work very well. Critics might argue that after a decade of underfunding, many are next to useless. Community Safety Partnerships are meant to consult their local communities on a regular basis. Please feel free to search the internet to find many who do this; we found hardly any !! The Government’s ‘vision’ is to strengthen multi-agency working.
But our conclusion is that much of this is about the way Councils and others engage with local communities on vital matters of public concern, and that elected members, officers and local activists should all have an opportunity to express their views and respond to this consultation.

2. There are three options. They are:
a. A new duty on a vast number of specific organisations (including Councils, Schools, Hospitals and all the rest) to have ‘due regard’ to the prevention and tackling violent crime. This is the Government’s preferred option
b. New legislation to strengthen Community Safety Partnerships.
c. A voluntary, non-legislative approach
Happily, the document lists advantages and disadvantages for each option, but there is no impact assessment at this stage.

3. The questionnaire is extensive. It clearly anticipates that respondents will, in the main be public bodies or organisations already working in this field. It wants to know what relevant activities they currently undertake. Not only that, can they please specify how much resource they use on these tasks, in full-time equivalent headcount numbers. It then gets more specific. Please indicate how many of 24 job categories are involved. For example, if you are a Hospital, please tell us how many nurses are involved in these activities? Good luck!
There is no objection in principle to such detailed fact-finding, but whether a consultation is the best way to do this is questionable. Surely this is research that should have been done much earlier in the policymaking process? At the Institute, we recommend that options development is carried out having done the necessary homework – and the resources used at present is something we would have expected the Home Office and the other Departments to have examined in depth way before the consultation. In any event, the respondents of the consultation may well be unrepresentative of the overall picture, so the answers may be less useful than you might imagine.
Is this a case therefore of a hurried policy initiative where time did not allow the usual pre-consultation engagement with experts in the field, and where the consultation is having to double-up – not just an exercise in seeking people’s views, but in basic data-gathering on current practice? It is possible that there was a huge amount of dialogue; we cannot be sure. But if so, why is none of this chronicled in the consultation paper. The way it reads, it seems unlikely.

4. It then asks the impossible! ‘How much additional time/resource would be required by your agency/organisation to implement and carry forward the proposed options in terms of
a. Full-time equivalents (per year)
b. Volunteer time (hours per week)
c. Volunteer time (hours per month)
d. Volunteer time (hours per year)
Now, we are sure respondents will rejoice at the opportunity to bid for more money and staff but suspect this is not the way HM Treasury normally approaches departmental budget-making. Under the 2nd Gunning Principle for lawful consultations, you must provide consultees with sufficient information about your proposals to enable intelligent consideration. In this case, do the envisaged target organisations for this consultation know enough to answer this question? The Home Office admits in respect of its preferred option that it would need to publish guidance on how the specified agencies should operate the ‘due regard’ obligation. But enough to anticipate headcount requirements? Hardly!
5. The enormous questionnaire will, hopefully provide useful information. But it seems ill-suited for this particular piece of policy-making, unless supplemented by more dialogue-based methods. This is an important subject and needs to be considered in a room of well-informed people and representatives of communities at risk from the sickening violence that so disfigures them. If the Government is serious, far more is needed to consider whether these proposals, or others can have the impact everyone desires. If the Government will not initiate such a programme of dialogue, maybe local Councils, Police and Crime Commissioners or even the NHS should take the initiative themselves.

For the Institute, this issue has exposed the need for some of the Partnership bodies that are necessarily involved to re-discover their requirement for local consultation, and to equip themselves with the resources, skills and knowledge to engage properly with local communities. We will ensure that all our Associates, working with public bodies right now are aware of this particular consultation and can assist them to respond constructively to its proposals. We will also seek to persuade the Home Office that this important consultation – which has many commendable features – needs a budget to enable it to hold deliberative events and public consultation hearings throughout the country so that it obtains a better view of informed reactions to its proposals

Rhion Jones is keen to establish contact with organisations and individuals who might share his analysis of this consultation, to explore ways of working together to make it a more effective exercise. Contact him on rhion@consultationinstitute.org