Today marks my final day with the Consultation Institute before I move on to pastures new. In the vein of PMQs, I feel I should announce that “This morning I had meetings with Institute colleagues and others”, and now as I lay down my pen (well, keyboard) for the final time with tCI I trust you won’t mind me getting a little nostalgic, and will forgive me if I take a little time to self-indulgently reflect on my time here and the place and state of public consultation in the UK.

I joined the Institute three months before the first lockdown, when Covid was merely a whisper on the wind drifting from the East. I’d already done the Law of Consultation course, having travelled up to York at the end of 2019 to do it in advance of getting the job, and I’d already had a chance to meet some of you at the 2019 Connect conference in Birmingham. Both of these provided me with a good foundation in consultation, which took me beyond my limited pre-existing awareness of consultation as part of the policy-making process.

Looking back, I can see that my first article was on the GEMA case (anyone remember that one?). According to the back-end stats on our website, it was the first of just over three hundred. In the intervening time, I have had the opportunity not only to work with my wonderful colleagues here at tCI, but also with many of you on different and interesting matters, not to mention the many hours I spent in my flat over lockdown under an upturned clothes-horse draped with bed-linen and towels recording voiceover for our courses and videos!

But this isn’t primarily a piece about everything I have done while I’m here. Instead, I want to consider the broader topic of consultation and engagement. I have written previously about how whilst elections are the eye-catching stars of democracy, in many ways they are not its lifeblood. The things that sustain democracy, that give it its shape, they sit often in the shadows and silently the wheels turn. Civil society, activism and the press are some of these pillars. Consultation and engagement is another.

In the UK, particularly over the next few years, the principles of consultation and engagement are likely to come under challenge. We have a Government which has demonstrated highly variable attitudes towards consultation, and these have often not been positive (see articles passim). It would be going too far to suggest that the key reason many Government plans have faltered or collapsed entirely over the last three years is because of insufficient or inadequate, consultation, but it’s difficult not to conclude that it has played a role. How many times have we seen something struggle because of something simple that had they run a consultation they would have learnt about? Too many. We’ve seen important things like the Elections Act and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act going entirely unconsulted on, basic principles of democracy changed without engaging with the people who will be most affected. At the very least, it represents a casual approach to consultation that doesn’t centre it at the heart of the decision-making process.

In light of the lean times ahead, this should concern us all. When public authorities start needing to make cuts, we know from past experience that consultation and engagement is often an early casualty. When the authority’s attitude to consultation is that it is an inconvenience, or unnecessary, this increases the likelihood that decision-makers will turn their eye to it as a cost-saving efficiency. This would mean more top-down decision-making. More decisions being made without the full information. The seldom heard, going even more seldomly heard. Just at the point where they will be struggling the most, and most need support and their views to be considered.

We’ve been speaking more recently about how consultation and engagement has properly come into its own as a distinctive profession, external to old paradigms where it was merely part of marketing or comms. Similarly, we have been outlining that as members of that profession, it behoves us to stand up for it, to make the argument as to why it is not only necessary but essential. With the likely challenges of the near-future, our willingness and ability to do so might soon be tested. If we are to ensure the maintenance of democracy, we must not be found wanting.

I realise that this all sounds fairly down on the subject, and lest I be accused of doom-mongering (my least favourite form of -mongering after fish- and iron- in that order*), I feel I must say that there are far more reasons for hope than fear. Practitioners are, generally, ever better at understanding and ensuring that the high standards the Institute supports are maintained. There is a vigour and energy to do the job to the absolute best of our ability. There is a confidence that we know how to do so. Post-covid we have new tools, and new ways of using old ones. It may not have been quite the seismic shift that some had predicted, but it has perhaps shaken us out of any complacencies we might have slipped into.

Outside the profession, the climate emergency has focussed public minds, particularly amongst the young, on how their voices are heard. This has meant that, certainly on this topic, there is perhaps more public attention on what we do, and more support for it than there ever has been before. If we can work out how to seize upon this and draw on it not just to fight the existential threat of climate change, but in other issues too, then it could represent a revolution in relationships between the citizenry and public authorities.

In a piece earlier this year, I suggested that we, as consultors, are “the couriers who bring democracy to… the kitchen table.” I stand by the characterisation. Our democracy is the one that is both the shield against bad faith decision-making and the sword of the individual fighting for their voice to be heard. It’s the one that is most easily undermined, unless we’re on guard, and it’s the one that’s closest to most people’s daily lives. As I step away from tCI, I leave confident that the business of democracy is in good hands.

To my dear colleagues, both staff and associates at tCI, it has been the most superlative of pleasures to walk alongside you on our mad little road. To the Institute clients who I’ve had the opportunity to work with over my time here it has always been fun and interesting in equal measure. And to those who have read my articles, briefings and other papers- I hope they have proved both useful and entertaining, and thank you for your patience when I get a little long-winded! I look forward to seeing what comes next for all of you.

Hill out.

*I had to get one last terrible joke in, I do apologise.