New Survey Exposes the UK’s Consultation Gap

New trust data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reveals a paradox in UK public engagement: people feel invited to have a say, but rarely feel it changes anything. That gap is exactly what UK courts already test for in lawful consultation, and it exposes where processes fall short.

What does the OECD’s 2026 Trust Survey say about public trust in government?

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has published the third wave of its Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions, covering thirty-three OECD member countries, including the United Kingdom. The survey measures how far people trust their national government and the specific factors that shape that trust.

Those factors include reliability, responsiveness, integrity, openness and fairness. The headline finding is that trust in national government across the OECD has stabilised at around 40 per cent reporting high or moderately high trust, against 43 per cent reporting low or no trust, following a small decline in the previous wave.

Trust in the police, courts, local government and the civil service remains consistently higher than trust in national government. The OECD Trust Survey is the established benchmark for how people experience public institutions, from day-to-day service delivery to complex policy decisions, drawn from representative samples across each participating country.

It identifies the factors most strongly associated with institutional trust, including whether people believe government uses evidence, balances the interests of current and future generations, and gives people like them a genuine say in what government does.

Why does having a say matter more than service satisfaction?

Of the factors the OECD tested, perceived political voice, meaning whether people believe that people like them can influence government decisions, produced one of the widest trust gaps of all. The gap between those who feel they have a say and those who do not stood at 48 percentage points across the OECD in 2025, having widened from 44 points in 2021 before stabilising.

The United Kingdom presents an unusual pattern worth reading carefully. The trust gap linked to political voice was measured at just eight percentage points, among the narrowest of any participating country and similar to France. Read alone, that looks reassuring.

But the trust gap linked to education tells a different story. In 2021 and 2023, people with lower levels of education reported higher trust in the national government than those with degrees. By 2025, that had reversed into a 31 percentage point gap, one of the largest in the OECD.

Taken together, these two findings suggest that feeling formally invited to participate is not the same as feeling that participation changes anything for people like you. That distinction sits at the heart of UK consultation law.

What does this mean for the legal test for lawful consultation in the UK?

UK courts have never treated consultation as a box-ticking exercise. The Gunning principles, the established legal test for fair public consultation, were derived from R v London Borough of Brent ex parte Gunning (1985) 84 LGR 168 and confirmed by the Supreme Court in R (Moseley) v London Borough of Haringey [2014] UKSC 56.

They require that consultation takes place while proposals are still at a formative stage, that the reasons for a proposal are given, that there is adequate time to respond, and that the product of consultation is conscientiously taken into account before a final decision is made.

That fourth principle, conscientious consideration, is precisely what the OECD’s political voice data is measuring from the public’s side. A consultation that invites comment but visibly fails to engage with it satisfies neither Gunning’s fourth principle nor the underlying driver of trust the OECD has identified. Law and public opinion are describing the same failure.

What should public bodies do differently?

The OECD’s data on barriers to participation points to a related risk. Across the OECD, around 21 per cent of people cite lack of time as a barrier to having a say, 19 per cent cite lack of money, and 18 per cent cite geographical distance from where decisions are made.

Consultations that rely on a single channel, held at a single time, in a single location, will systematically exclude the groups already least likely to feel heard. That pattern has clear relevance to the Public Sector Equality Duty under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 wherever a consultation affects protected groups unevenly.

Public bodies preparing a consultation on a service change, budget decision or infrastructure proposal should check two things: whether engagement channels reach people beyond those already inclined to respond, and whether the decision report can show, in specific and traceable terms, how responses altered or confirmed the final decision.

Both are Gunning requirements. Both are now, independently, evidenced drivers of public trust in government.

How tCI Can Help

Advice and Guidance
A tCI faculty member will work alongside you to support the development of your decisions and engagement approach. We provide independent, constructive advice at critical stages, helping you strengthen stakeholder mapping, test communication strategies, and plan robust post-decision engagement. Our role is to act as a critical friend, offering practical recommendations grounded in consultation law and good practice that build confidence in your process.

Risk Assessment
Early identification of legal, political or reputational risks in your engagement approach. Using tCI’s five-risk methodology, we spot gaps before challenge arises, helping you strengthen stakeholder communication and demonstrate procedural fairness from the outset.

Executive Briefings
Concise updates for senior leaders on consultation law, engagement duties and post-decision risks. Helps boards and leadership teams make confident, defensible decisions when under pressure, with clear guidance on what good engagement looks like after difficult choices are made.

Whether you’re preparing for a high stakes service change or building defensible evidence for complex decisions, we can help.

Contact tCI: hello@consultationinstitute.org