Every profession spawns a unique vocabulary, often supplemented by acronyms and initialisations bewildering to an outsider. Attend a meeting of Health Professionals and you will be bombarded by a complex…

Ten years ago today, the Institute opened the doors of its new, purpose-built Centre of Excellence at Biggleswade The Consultation Institute had been run from a very traditional office in…

Walter Bagehot – still the most quoted authority on the British constitution – summed up the monarch’s role with the words ‘the right to be consulted, the right to encourage,…

Against a background of Heathrow’s third Runway proposal, climate change activists flexing their muscles and an intensifying debate about the future of the aviation industry, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA)…

There are a range of circumstances where a consultation takes place but then it becomes necessary to repeat the task. A County Council consults on a reconfiguration of services and is…

How seriously are we considering the VERY big issues? Three years ago – with the Referendum aftershocks still resounding, we speculated whether the BREXIT planning period would usher in a…

In a number of organisations, the days of turning up to a meeting to be greeted with a consultation document complete with options, a questionnaire and timetable (ambitious as it…

Ministry refusal to disclose rejected by the Information Commissioner. Another story from the category marked ‘Surely this cannot have happened?’ On 8th May 2018, just three weeks before the Grenfell…

Over the last 10 years there have been several legal cases challenging the consideration of options by public bodies. In R (ex parte Bokrosova) v London Borough of Lambeth, the…