News & Insights
Coffee Morning Season Three: 13 sessions, every Thursday, September to November
Season Two closed at the end of July and we are still being asked for the Insight Journals from Season 1! Thank you to everyone who came along, and particularly to the practitioners who were willing to talk about the experiences, and share their insights. We think it is always worth turning up – but then we are bias.
Click Here to Register and we will send you an invite to our Coffee Mornings
Season Three of the tCI Coffee Morning runs every Thursday from 3 September to 26 November, 11am to 12pm. The format is unchanged, because it works: one hour, one topic, led by a tCI Fellow or a specialist guest, and the floor open to anyone dealing with the same questions.
The programme opens with Gunning 4 and closes with the Public Sector Equality Duty. In between it takes in the move away from consultation by default, participatory budgeting, mediation, asset mapping, digital narrative mapping and the evidence base an NHS case for change needs before a consultation can open. One session we have wanted to run for a long time: David Mallett, who wrote the NHS England service-change guidance, joins us on 19 November.
Every session is followed by an Insight Journal, a short written record of the key discussion points, and it goes to everyone who registers.
Whether you joined us for Season One or Season Two, or this would be your first, email hello@consultationinstitute.organd we will add you. Registration is free, and you can ask to be included in future seasons automatically so you never have to think about it again.
Insight Journals
After each Coffee Morning, we publish an Insight Journal: a short written record of the session’s key discussion points, case references, and practical conclusions. Season One produced twelve journals, covering co-production, AI in questionnaires, seldom-heard communities, Healthwatch, stakeholder mapping, the law of consultation, continuous engagement, emergency service change, digital engagement, and equality analysis. If you want a particular Journal, please email us at email hello@consultationinstitute.org and we will send them over to you.
The journals are circulated to registered attendees. If you are not registered for Season Three, you will not receive them. Registration is free.
How to Join
Sessions run on Thursday mornings from 11am to 12pm, via MS Teams. To register, email hello@consultationinstitute.org and we will send you an invite for the full season. You can also join directly using this link to the Teams meeting:
https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/343577036817760?p=10HwRno8lMr8haLKhV
3 September | Gunning 4: What Does ‘Conscientious Consideration’ Really Require?
Most practitioners know the Gunning Principles, and many recognise Gunning 4 as the requirement to give consultation responses conscientious consideration. But what does that mean in practice? Barry Creasy explores the less well-known elements of the duty, the risks practitioners can easily overlook, and what good conscientious consideration should look like in a defensible consultation process.
Discussion Lead: Barry Creasy
10 September | What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Most practitioners know the Gunning Principles, and many recognise Gunning 4 as the requirement to give consultation responses conscientious consideration. But what does that mean in practice? Barry Creasy explores the less well-known elements of the duty, the risks practitioners can easily overlook, and what good conscientious consideration should look like in a defensible consultation process.
Discussion Leads: Andy Wright and Nick Duffin
17 September | Participatory Budgeting: When Should We Use It?
Participatory budgeting is often associated simply with deciding how money should be spent, but the methodology has much wider applications. Anna Collins explores how its principles can support engagement, consultation, change and design processes — particularly where priorities compete, choices are difficult or parties are reluctant to compromise.
Discussion Lead: Anna Collins
24 September | Rewiring the State: What Happens to the Duty to Consult?
The Government has said it wants to move away from “consultation by default”, introduce new forms of public participation and consider revoking statutory consultation duties it regards as performative. With the White Paper expected this autumn, Nick Duffin and Simon Angelides examine tCI’s published response, including the test we propose for identifying a performative duty and the crucial question of what remains once a statutory duty to consult is removed.
Discussion Leads: Nick Duffin and Simon Angelides
1 October | How Mediation Can Strengthen Consultation and Engagement
Consultation and engagement can become difficult when relationships deteriorate, positions harden or stakeholders and consulting bodies reach an impasse. Mina Jesa explores when mediation can help, how it can improve relationships and communication, and how it may enable an engagement or consultation process to move forward and achieve better outcomes.
Discussion Lead: Special Guest – Mina Jesa
8 October | Common Digital Consultation Mistakes and How to Fix Them
Rachel Richardson explores how seemingly small digital design mistakes can create significant barriers to participation. The session looks at common problems across the digital consultation journey, how they affect accessibility, trust and response rates, and the practical changes that can make online consultation clearer, more inclusive and easier to use.
Discussion Lead: Returning Special Guest – Rachel Richardson
15 October | Consultation and Engagement in the Real World
Best-practice guidance is important, but practitioners operate in a world of shrinking teams, reducing resources, repeated reorganisations and increasing demands. Andy Wright leads a practical discussion about the gap between best practice and delivery reality and how consultation and engagement professionals can maintain standards while working within genuine organisational constraints.
Discussion Leads: Andy Wright
22 October | Should Inclusion Shape Consultation and Engagement?
Inclusion is about much more than ensuring minority groups are represented. Mina Jesa makes the case for embedding inclusive thinking throughout the way consultation and engagement are designed and delivered, examining how working more inclusively can improve participation, strengthen decision-making and ultimately lead to better outcomes.
Discussion Lead: Special Guest – Mina Jesa
29 October | Asset Mapping: Finding the Resources You Already Have
Effective consultation and engagement depends on much more than the resources within your immediate team. Asset mapping helps identify the people, skills, relationships, networks, systems and capabilities available both inside your organisation and among external stakeholders. Anna Collins explores how this approach can strengthen the design and delivery of engagement and consultation programmes.
Discussion Lead: Anna Collins
5 November | Controlling the Online Narrative During Consultation and How to Do It
Every consultation takes place within an existing digital narrative shaped by public sentiment, community voices, online conversations and, sometimes, misinformation. Rachel Richardson introduces digital narrative mapping and explores how teams can understand what people are already saying, anticipate emerging concerns, respond to issues earlier and frame their consultation more effectively.
Discussion Lead: Returning Special Guest – Rachel Richardson
12 November | Co-design, Co-production and Engagement: Choosing the Right Approach
Co-design and co-production can be powerful approaches, but they are not automatically the right answer for every situation. In this informal session, Andy Wright explores where they add genuine value, where other forms of engagement may be more appropriate, and the practitioner’s role in deciding how, when and where these approaches should be used.
Discussion Lead: Andy Wright
19 November | The Case for Change: The Work That Comes Before Consultation
NHS service-change consultations that run into difficulty are often in trouble before the consultation even opens. The case for change may be poorly evidenced, commissioners and providers may not be aligned, or the clinical community may not yet support the direction of travel. David Mallett, who wrote the NHS England service-change guidance, joins Dr Zoe Cookson and Simon Angelides to examine how strong the evidence base needs to be, what to do when clinical agreement is still developing, and how early engagement can begin before there is a fully formed solution to put forward
Discussion Leads: David Mallett, Dr Zoe Cookson and Simon Angelides
26 November | The PSED Must Be Integrated into Consultation and Engagement – But How?
The courts have made clear that compliance with the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) should be integrated into decision-making and related processes rather than treated as a separate exercise. But what does that mean for consultation and engagement in practice? Nicholas Duffin explains the reasoning behind this requirement and explores practical ways to embed equality considerations throughout the process.
Discussion Lead: Nick Duffin
Simon Angelides
More news
Season Two closed at the end of July and we are still being asked for the Insight Journals from Season...
