Foreword

From emptying bins, ensuring food safety, helping people to avoid homelessness, managing planning applications, enabling recycling and more, every day the Council takes decisions and provides services that impact people’s lives.

While our councillors are democratically accountable to the electorate via the ballot box, we understand that to meet our vision of ‘serving people, improving lives’ there is a need to consult and engage our communities in a meaningful way so that their needs and feedback are considered in the decisions that we make, enabling us to achieve better outcomes together.

In recent years the Council, like most authorities, has faced ongoing financial pressures because of the combination of increased demand for services and reduced funding from central government. This has meant that we have had to make difficult decisions to scale back aspects of community engagement outside of the legal necessities.

While these challenges remain, in defining this Strategy we want to set a clear intent to engage meaningfully and to go beyond what is legally required of us where we can, so that we involve our communities more in changes that affect them.

We don’t promise that consultation and engagement is easy or will always lead to our communities getting everything that they want – that’s clearly not realistic in the current economic climate. What we do promise is that we will continually seek to improve how we engage with our communities, so that we meet our legal obligations, and we will seek to go further where there is benefit to outcomes in doing so and where we can achieve this within available resources. We commit to being honest about the ‘tough stuff’ and to doing this inclusively so that our decisions are well informed and impacts properly understood.

The Council is committed to consultation and engagement that is a genuine two-way process, making it clear what can be influenced, and what can’t, giving the people we serve, employ and work with an opportunity to influence decisions that affect them in a way that is accessible for them.

We won’t always get it right – no organisation does – what we hope in designing this strategy is that we provide clarity on our intent – and a consistent framework for the delivery of it.

Mike Hill, Chief Executive

Purpose

The purpose of this strategy is to set out the strategic vision and framework for consultation across the Council, and to make clear where consultation and engagement fit within the context of service design, policy and service change.

Scope

The strategy applies to the whole Council and all service areas within it. It seeks to complement rather than to replicate or replace statutory consultation requirements within individual service areas. The strategy covers both external and internal consultation.

Why Do We Consult?

Gedling’s vision is to ‘serve people and improve lives’.

As a public authority, it is important that Gedling’s services are shaped by the needs of the people who use them, within the overall budgetary, legal and operational constraints within which the Council must operate.

• Improved trust between the Council and the communities it serves.
• Enablement of evidence-based decision making.
• Support for improvements to customer-centric service delivery by engaging users of services in the design of services to meet their needs.
• Ability to gain multiple perspectives so that any unintended consequences or potential differential impacts can be properly understood before decisions are taken.

Consultation vs. Engagement

Consultation: The process of seeking feedback so that the Council can take well-informed decisions. The decision-making power rests with the Council.

Engagement: A more interactive process that encourages dialogue and collaboration and may include co-designing outputs, sharing power between the Council and those involved.

When Must the Council Consult?

1. When there is an express duty to consult (e.g., planning applications, policy formulation).
2. When there is a legitimate expectation based on past practices or promises.
3. To ensure fairness where decisions significantly impact the public.

Vision for Consultation

To ensure Gedling operates lawfully in relation to required consultation and creates meaningful and accessible additional opportunities for consultation and engagement where outcomes can be improved by doing so, and where resources allow.

How We Consult and Engage

At its most basic, there are 7 steps involved in any consultation:

1. Determine the subject of the consultation.
2. Determine if it is a mandatory consultation required by law.
3. Decide who needs to be consulted with using data wherever possible.
4. Design the process ensuring a targeted approach.
5. Carry out the consultation.
6. Analyse the consultation feedback.
7. Feed back to those involved to ‘close the loop’.

Principles of Consultation and Engagement

• Ensuring compliance with relevant legislation.
• Actively targeting consultation and engagement activities.
• Ensuring inclusivity and accessibility in processes.
• Providing enough time for consultation and responses.
• Considering all views in decision-making.
• Continually learning from feedback to improve practices.