Agenda item

Scrutiny Committee is asked to note the consultation and engagement carried out by the council during 2022-2023 and make any comments to Cabinet for consideration.

Cabinet member for Communications presented the report, supported by the Communications and Engagement Manager. The Head of Corporate Services was also present online.

In the last financial year, the Consultation and Engagement team conducted 22 consultations, launched 21 feedback forms, supported four neighbourhood plan consultations and five conservation area appraisals. The new annual report highlighted the key findings from each project and the actions the councils have taken from the outcomes of these engagement activities.

The report showed the variety of engagement the councils carried out and demonstrated how consultation and engagement findings have led to changes in council services.

Below summarises the main discussion of the committee.

• Members found that the inclusion of district demographics data in the report was very useful.
• Members asked how were people asked? And what were the different platforms for consultation? Officers responded that the team used software called SmartSurvey and had obtained lots of email addresses particularly during Covid, when online surveys became the default method. The officer present suggested that the team needed to get out and about which was resource intensive but effective.
• The Joint Local Plan (JLP) consultation was approaching, and the team had plans to consult residents in cafes and schools . The officer felt that the JLP is likely to have an impact on college age residents as future homeowners – therefore we needed to try and reach these groups. Facebook and direct mail were successful methods.
• A member asked whether we can benchmark against other authorities to assess the effectiveness of resources used and their impact? The officers responded that we needed to define what was a successful consultation. The South and Vale team was comprised of three members of staff in addition to the manager. We do need to see how much each consultation costs in terms of staffing costs, yet it was thought to be more efficient than outsourcing. Response rate was a crude measure and not necessarily a sign of quality consultation exercises.
• It was noted that for The Beacon consultation project, the  team reached out in person to users of the facility and not just via social media.
• The impending JLP and Corporate Plan consultations will use the teams new, more interactive software called Citizen Space.
• A member queried a governance review where only 5 people replied – in response the officers responded that some topics only affect a few people hence a smaller response rate.
• A member asked were we ready to respond to varied answers of those we only start reaching now? (underserved residents).
• A members suggested a Youth Council as an engagement method – officer added that they were not keen on consulting the identical group of people each time. The team continued to look at best practices for example, West Oxfordshire District Council created a good charter for young people.
• Other suggested methods from members were consulting businesses on the high street, a Citizens Assembly, telephone polls and residents’ panels.
• The officer added that we had a large consultation mailing list, and that a large proportion of work was for statutory consultation.
• Taxi tariffs consultation – a member asked whether all consultations were in this report? Officer confirmed that yes, all of the last financial year except ongoing neighbourhood plan activities (there were two currently). Officer added that there were plans for some light-touch activities such as polls.
• It was explained that using Tiktok was too intensive with little to no traction.

Resolved:

Committee noted the report and commended officers for a well written and clear report.

Committee’s main comments to Cabinet were:

1. Officers need to include their award nomination in the report.

2. Advertise/promote this report and include it in the data hub.

3. What were the consultation team’s learning points? Committee would like to see a formal look back at lessons learned in future annual reports.

4. Platforms – committee would like to see all the platforms available for the team to use for consultations. Committee discussed potential development of a framework of criteria and benchmarking against other authorities, although mindful of the team’s capacity. Could a criteria for ‘what a successful consultation looks like’ be developed between Cabinet and the Consultations team?

Chair thanked all officers for their work.