The results are in and as predicted by many pundits and polls a Labour government has been returned.

The week of the election coincided with Co-production Week 2024, a celebration of working in equal partnership with people using services, carers, families and the wider population. Here at the Institute we’ve also been celebrating the week with some of our own thoughts and reflection on our experiences of delivering and supporting co-production while keeping a keen on the election race.

So, now the election race is all over and the politicians get on with the business of forming a government, let’s take a look at what this result means for co-production and specifically the implications for the world of engagement and consultation. We know we have a promise of a summer of action, and we know that this will include a commitment to reconnection, changes to the planning regime and large scale infrastructure for renewable energy amongst other things.

This will all require a deeper connection with communities and a meaningful approach to engagement that opens up constructive debate while reducing consultation fatigue. For many this can be delivered through the delivery or robust and appropriate engagement activity, but the continued commitment to co-production from policy makers lends the opportunity to widen and deepen this. This, however, is not without its challenges (or should we say opportunities) and as we see UK government policy bed-in over the coming months and come to understand the implications for the devolved administrations in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, we can also look forward.

This forward view includes the opportunity to further embed co-production in the ways we embed co-production at the group/neighbourhood and strategic level while learning from colleagues in health and social care delivering the activity celebrated in co-production week. We can most usefully use the principles of co-production to develop the ideas that underpin the big changes such as we will see in large power infrastructure projects, which will be tested by wider audiences in formal consultation.

How can we help?

We can help this ambitious agenda for change in two ways:

1. By supporting people through training and professional development in co-production focused on engagement and consultation.
2. By working with teams to help them understand the extent to which their engagement and consultation activity is co-production ready.

Training and professional development: On the basis that co-production is not a ‘lift and shift’ activity, with each context and situation requiring a separate and unique response we do not offer a standard approach to this support with the exception of our public training programme. We do, however, have a customisable programmes that provide a broad range of support to support professional development, which are:

1. Introductory – a tailored session taking account of the specific context and specialist skills to develop a basic understanding of co-production and co-design.
2. Focused – delivered in a workshop setting taking the principles of co-production and co-design and developing a detailed understanding around a case study to unpick and unpack outline practical approaches to building a meaningful environment of shared power.
3. Action learning – longitudinal working with a group, who each select an individual or collective ‘wicked problem’ to work through in a structured environment.
4. Senior leader briefing – a brief intervention tailored to the system context to support senior leader understanding and buy into an organisation wide co-productive environment.
5. Assessing your readiness to co-produce (engagement and consultation):  with the increasing focus on co-production as a policy tool in the traditional engagement and consultation timeline it is often hard to see where to begin. We have worked with our team of experienced associates to develop an assessment tool, which is applied and independently verified the will give confidence in your approach and provide practical tips and tactics to develop a successful co-productive environment. This is based on our experience of what works and is detailed in easily recognised and measurable steps.