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EMPOWERING CITIZENS, CONSUMERS, COUNCILLORS OR CABINETS? THE IMPACT
OF CONSULTATION ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
Catherine Needham Nuffield College
Oxford OX1 1NF
Abstract
This paper highlights the centrality of consultation to the local government reform agenda undertaken by the Labour Party in the UK since 1997, and evaluates the impact of consultation on the balance of power between local citizens, service users, backbench councillors and cabinet members. Consultation will here be seen as a resource which may potentially empower consultees, but may also be used to influence internal debates between backbencher councillors, executive members and the officers that support them. The research focuses on local government in England and Wales, and uses a case study approach to evaluate the consultation exercises undertaken by Oxford City Council in 2001-2002. Through a series of interviews with commissioning officers, the paper assesses the extent to which the methodology and the subject matter of consultation indicates a citizen or consumer focus. Councillors were also interviewed, and internal and public documents analysed, in order to assess the implications of consultation for internal council relations. The research findings from Oxford City Council indicate that the role local people are being asked to play in consultation exercises is a consumerist rather than citizen-oriented role. Consultation is more likely to be on service than policy issues and to use methodologies that minimise rather than encourage participant involvement. Consultees are being asked to give feedback on existing services or pre-drafted policies rather than to initiate ideas or play a direct role in decision-making. Giving feedback is an important function in allowing local people a voice in local administration, but such an approach fails to match the rhetorical radicalism of the central government’s pronouncements on empowering communities through consultation. Local people remain dependent on their local councillors to represent their interests, and exercise only an indirect influence on outcomes. Under the new political structures, even this indirect influence is limited since backbench councillors are shut out of policy-making. Based on these findings the paper concludes that local councils can respond to central government’s consultation agenda without changing the balance of power between the council and local people. The impact of consultation on the internal balance of power has generally been to reinforce the tendencies within the new political structures to shift influence away from backbench councillors and towards the cabinet.
Paper for presentation at the ECPR Joint Workshops Session, Turin, 23-27 March, 2002
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1. Introduction Local government reform in the UK must be understood as a continuous rather than a discrete process. Since 1979, over 200 bills relating to the powers of local government have been signed into law, in an almost continual effort to redefine the structure and scope of local government. Within this continuous reform process, many of the same questions have been revisited – local government finance, political decision structures, the method of service delivery – with different emphases according to the political priorities of the national leadership. Thatcher’s premiership saw a concern with slimming down local authorities to a residual core, with many of their functions contracted out to the private sector and increased financial dependence on central government. During Major’s time as Prime Minister, the emphasis shifted to improving local administration, with a series of charters created to equip service users with information and commitments of service quality. The reform agenda of Blair’s government has focused on reinvigorating local political leadership and enhancing the role of local government as a community leader. It is the reforms undertaken since 1997, affecting local government in England and Wales, that are the focus of this paper. There are three main strands to Labour’s reform programme, as laid out in the 1998 white paper Modern Local Government: In Touch with the People (DETR, 1998). The first is a change in political management structures, introducing a political executive into local government for the first time, and requiring councils to consult the public on whether they favour a directly elected mayor or a collective executive.1 The second is a move away from compulsory competitive tendering of services, as required under Thatcher and Major, and towards a ‘best value’ regime which requires councils to undertake rolling reviews of service provision, moving services out to the private sector where that would add value. The third element is to embed local councils more firmly in their communities through introducing electoral reforms to stimulate turnout in local elections and through strengthening links between councils and local people. All these reform initiatives have a common core: the theme of consulting the public. In a series of white papers and bills since 1997, the Department for the Environment Transport and the Regions (DETR) has called on local government to allow local people to have a stronger voice as voters, service users, and community representatives.2 The new political management structures require popular endorsement; the delivery of best value requires that local authorities consult with local people in the setting of new performance targets;3 the community leadership agenda requires councillors and officers to build up regular links with people in their localities, ‘engag[ing] directly with those they represent, conducting consultation exercises or playing a part in local neighbourhood forums’ (DETR, 1998, para 3.10).
1 Twenty-three councils have so far held referendums on whether to move to a directly elected mayor,
with eight voting in favour. 2 In June 2001, the DETR was renamed the Department for Transport, Local Government and the
Regions (DTLR). 3 To fulfil the best value requirements, councils are required to challenge why and how a service is
being provided; invite comparison with others' performance across a range of relevant indicators,
taking into account the views of both service users and potential suppliers; consult with local taxpayers,
service users and the wider business community in the setting of new performance targets; and embrace
fair competition as a means of securing efficient and effective services (DETR, 1998).
3
The aim of this paper is to critically analyse the role that consultation has played in shaping the government-citizen relationship at local level since 1997, exploring the extent to which it has empowered local residents, or has become a resource for decision-makers within the council. It looks at the impact of consultation on internal governmental relations, and how far it has shifted the balance of power between councillors or empowered officers vis-à-vis councillors. Consultation will be understood as a resource for those seeking to influence decision outcomes, allowing supporters of a particular policy position to claim popular backing for their proposal. Tracing the impact of consultation on decision-making within local government raises a data-gathering problem. There are over 400 local governmental authorities in the UK, each with a distinctive set of operating practices. Rather than undertaking a survey of all local authorities, this paper adopts a case study approach, in order to trace in detail the impact of consultation on decision-making. The data discussed below is drawn from an observation of the use of consultation by Oxford City Council during 2001. Like all case studies it raises problems of generalisability, yet given the common legislative context within which councils operate it is hoped that it will indicate the incentives and problems which encourage or impede effective consultation at local level. Oxford City Council was selected as a case study partly on the ease of access to interviewees and source material, but also on the perception that as a medium sized city council it fell around the median in terms of council size and might offer insights that have applicability to smaller and larger communities. 4 2. Consultation in Local Government The centrality of consultation to the post-1997 reform agenda should not be taken to indicate that 1997 was the year zero for local consultation. Statutory requirements to consult have long existed in housing, planning, social care and education, and have recently been introduced in other areas such as crime and disorder. Outside these areas, councils were free to determine the extent to which they consulted residents, leading to wide variance between local authorities in their usage of consultation techniques.5 Since 1997 consultation has become a matter for central prescription rather than local discretion. The Labour government elected in 1997 has published four local government white papers, and passed two acts of parliament. The Modern Local Government (1998) white paper was the most comprehensive, setting out the new government’s reform agenda for local councils. It called for a ‘fundamental shift in power and influence towards local people’ (DETR, 1998, para 4.6), noting that, ‘New structures alone will not bring about renewal of local democracy…that can only come about if there is…close and regular contact between a council and local people between elections’ (DETR, 1998, para 4.1). Thus the white paper states that, ‘The Government wishes to see consultation and participation embedded into the culture of all councils…and undertaken across a wide range of each council’s responsibilities’ (DETR, 1998, para 4.6).
4 Oxford City Council is a district council with responsibilities for running local planning, housing and
environmental health, electoral registration, refuse collection, leisure and parks services, markets and
fairs, tourism and cemeteries. The city has a population of 142,000, represented by 51 city councillors,
and since May 2000 has been run by a Liberal Democrat-Green Party coalition. In 2001, it moved to a
new decision-making structure as required by the 2000 Local Government Act. 5 For a cross-UK survey of local authority consultation during the 1990s see De Montfort
University/University of Strathclyde, (1998).
4
The 1999 Local Government Act, introducing the best value regime, casts its consultation requirements widely, encompassing taxpayers, the business community, service users and those with ‘an interest in any area within which the authority carries out functions’ (DETR, 1999b, clause 3.2). The 2000 Local Government Act, which set up new political structures within local government, requires backbench councillors to ‘develop stronger links with their communities’ (DETR, 2000). In December 2001, the renamed ministry, the Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR) published a new white paper, entitled Strong Local Leadership, Quality Public Services, which demanded that councils allow more input from citizens: ‘We want local authorities to make more use of area forums, public assemblies and citizen’s user boards’ (DTLR, 2001, para 2.47). Thus consultation has come to be the common theme that unites a range of reform initiatives, stretching across all areas of local authority jurisdiction. As a local administration, the authority must consult its service users; as a local government, the council must allow citizens to have a voice beyond the formal election cycle. The centrality of consultation to recent reforms suggests that the findings of consultation exercises will be imbued with considerable weight within debates over policy priorities. Consultation findings have a dual potency, uniting the political force of central government’s prescription with the democratic legitimacy of methods that claim to authoritatively represent the will of all or some of the people. Consultation can therefore be seen as a resource for local decision-makers to ensure that they prevail in a particular debate. Conceiving consultation as a resource begs the question: a resource for whom? This will be the focus of the discussion that follows. Implicit within the government pronouncements on consultation has been the assumption that consultation will be a resource to empower local people, yet participation in consultation exercises does not in itself enable consultees to influence policy outcomes. Commissioning officers and councillors may be able to utilise consultation findings to achieve their goals more effectively than participants. Analysing consultation exercises raises the question of how consultation is to be defined. Consultation is not given a clear definition within the recent legislation, and has varying meanings in the literature, indicating that its definition should not be taken as self-evident.6 The definition that will be used in this paper is of consultation as formal, government-initiated, interaction with the public on matters of policy or service delivery between elections. By limiting it to formal interaction, this definition excludes ongoing and informal links between councillors and their constituents which are hard to measure in any systematic way. By including only government-initiated interaction, the definition assumes that consultation requires local government to act as the principal agent in initiating contact, and hence excludes community-generated efforts to influence government. Of the groups that may be potentially be empowered via consultation, it is possible to identify three categories: consultees, councillors and officers. The first two categories can be further subdivided. Consultees can be targetted as service users, with a narrow service interest, or as community members with a wider interest in local policy-making. The sub-categories of consumer and citizen will be used to distinguish the targets of service-based consultation from those consulted on wider policy questions. Councillors can also be
6 For Lowndes et al, for example, consultation is a subset of participation (Lowndes, 2001a, 206). For
the Local Government Management Board (LGMB), consultation stops where participation begins
(LGMB, 1998, 1).
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subdivided, as a result of the political management reforms that followed the 2000 Local Government Act, into backbench councillors and those councillors with executive responsibilities. The sections below will define these terms more clearly and use empirical data from Oxford City Council to measure the extent to which these groups are able to utilise consultation to protect or promote their interests. 3. The Consultees: Citizens and Consumers Those participating in consultation exercises can be asked to play a range of roles, depending on the issue under scrutiny and the methodology being used. It is possible to identify two broad categories of participant: the service user (or consumer) and the citizen. Within the literature on local government and consultation it is common to use this dual categorisation though there is variance in the attributes given to the citizen and the consumer, and the forms of consultation which are seen as targeting one or the other. For some authors, it is the method of consultation which marks it out to be consumer-oriented or citizen-oriented; for others, it is the issue being consulted on which determines the consumer or citizen focus. Here it will be argued that both method and issue are relevant in determining whether a consultation exercise should be classified as consumerist or citizen-based. In evaluating the method used to consult, it is useful to refer to the classic distinction made by Hirschman between voice, the realm of the citizen, and exit, the method of the dissatisfied consumer (Hirschman, 1970, 30). As Lusk points out, in practice consumers of local government services often have a limited right of exit, given the lack of alternative providers or their lack of market power (Lusk, 1997, 68). Thus the consumer of local services must use voice more than his private sector equivalent. Dibben and Bartlett argue that voice is the most powerful tool for the consumer of local government services, since it provides a right of complaint, whereas for citizens there are more participatory forms of empowerment:
Empowering the public as a customer involves extending choices or clarifying the service to which they are entitled, giving them the means to complain and providing equality and ease of access. In contrast, by empowering people as citizens, the public are entitled to a share in decision-making.
Dibben and Barlett, 2001, 46
Consumerist methods can then be understood as those which limit the consultee role to a narrow form of voice, such as the expression of complaint or the provision of information, whereas the citizen has a broader range or tools, offering ideas, outlining priorities and becoming involved in the shaping of policy. Stewart (1997) and Cairncross et al (1997) draw the distinction between the consumer and the citizen on an individual versus collective basis, and this distinction is also relevant when considering the method used to consult. Consultation exercises may ask the participant to report on individual service experiences or behaviour (consumer-oriented), or may ask the consultee to make an appraisal on what is best for the wider community (citizen-oriented). Stewart links consumer consultation to questions of self-interest and citizen-based consultation to issues affecting the public interest:
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As a customer one is concerned that one has received the service that best meets one’s personal needs. As a citizen one is concerned that the decisions made by government are in the public interest, albeit seen from one’s own perspective
Stewart, 1997, 5 This is not to claim that all consumers must be selfish and all citizens public-spirited, but is to say that consultation exercises will be framed to encourage individual-regarding or community-regarding responses. For the purposes of this research, consumerist methods will be seen as those which are targetted at the individual and which do not encourage discussion or consideration of non-self regarding issues, such as surveys and feedback forms. Alternative methods that allow greater interactivity and a decision-making rolefor participants will be classed as citizen-oriented. Alongside methodological distinctions between consumer- and citizen-oriented consultation it is possible to develop an issue-based dimension. Consumers are being targeted as service users, and hence, it can be assumed, are being consulted on service issues. Where consultation exercises ask participants to give a view on policy questions, these can be conceived as citizen-oriented. Stoker argues that in consulting consumers councils are asking for short-term impressions of service use, whereas consulting citizens involves consideration of longer-term strategic questions (Stoker, 1997) Giving evidence to the Public Administration Select Committee, Sue Goss from Birmingham University commented, ‘If one only treats people as consumers, then the only sort of feedback that you get from the public is, “We want everything and we want it now”, which is impossible to deliver’ (Goss, 2000, qu 445). To classify consultation exercises as consumerist or citizen-oriented, therefore, both method and issue are important. A local authority may be consistent in combining say, a consumerist method and issue. Alternatively, a local authority may use consumerist methods but use them to consult on an issue that targets consultees as citizens, or else may use inclusive, citizen-oriented methods to target consumers. Oxford City Council’s consultation exercises will be analysed below in order to assess how they should be ranked on this two dimensional scale. 4. Councillors and Cabinets Just as the role of consultee can be better understood by breaking it down into sub-categories, so it is important to recognise the varying roles that councillors now play within local government. However, whereas consultees can be both consumers and citizens, across different consultation exercises, there is no such duality within council roles. Under the new political structures, councillors perform either executive or backbench functions. There are several options for the executive structure laid out in the 2000 Local Government Act: a directly elected mayor and cabinet; a mayor and council manager and an executive leader and cabinet (DETR, 2000). The discussion here will focus on the executive leader and cabinet model which is used by Oxford City Council (see figure 1).
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Figure 1: The Political Management Structure of Oxford City Council
Members of the executive board or cabinet are drawn from the full council, and may be exclusively from the ruling party or from the range of parties in proportion to their strength in the full council. In Oxford, the ruling party group holds all portfolio positions and has an overall majority but opposition party members do sit on the executive. The role of the executive board is to implement the budget and policy framework agreed by the full council, to carry through detailed policy measures, and to take decisions on the day to day running of the authority. Those councillors who do not sit on the executive board – the backbenchers – have a scrutiny and oversight function, sitting on committees for this purpose. However, unlike backbenchers in the House of Commons, they have no role in ratifying proposed legislation by majority vote, but rather can only scrutinise policy that has already been agreed. The new legislation primarily expects backbenchers to play ‘an enhanced community role.’ Councillors should concentrate on ‘bringing the views of their community to bear on the council’s decisions, and on scrutinising their performance’ (DETR, 1998, 25). There is an irony, as Chandler points out, in that, ‘The more “in-touch” backbench councillors may be the people’s representatives but apparently can only represent the people by being freed from the onerous task of policy-making and political accountability that goes with it’ (Chandler, 2001, 9). Backbench councillors do have a role to play on the area committees, set up to allow some local control over area-based decisions, particularly in the field of planning. The area committee structure in Oxford was established in autumn 2001 and so far has
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had little impact on decision-making, although there are plans to devolve more powers to area committees in the future.7 The new structures have been met with hostility from some quarters, particularly from those councillors excluded from an executive role. In a national survey of councillors, Rao found that few members were satisfied with their exclusively ‘non-executive role’ (Rao, 1999). Given the implication that the new structures have weakened the backbenchers vis-à-vis members of the executive, consultation has the potential to either boost the role of the community-focused backbenchers or be a further resource for the decision makers on the executive. 5. Officers The officers of the council are permanent, professional and non-political. Their formal role is to implement the policy that is passed by councillors, but Stewart describes this as a ‘convenient assertion..conceal[ing] the reality that policy is often made in implementation, that implementation influences the making of policy and that officer advice necessarily influences policy’ (Stewart, 2000, 59). Stewart describes the officer as ‘the insider and a part of the organisation, appointed to it and carrying out its business’, whereas the councillor is ‘the outsider, ‘drawn from beyond the organisation, yet formally within it’ (Stewart, 2000, 225). This distinction between insider and outsider indicates that the officer may have resources which are not available to councillors, including professional expertise or a pre-existing relationship with consultee groups. Since officers are responsible for commissioning the formal consultation undertaken by local government, it is possible that consultation is a resource for these officers, allowing them to shape policy outcomes by the way in which they interpret and utilise consultation findings. Indeed, under the new legislation officers are expected to exercise more discretion, taking devolved responsibilities from the portfolio holder. The Modern Local Government white paper points to ‘advantages in extensive delegation of executive decisions and implementation [to officers]’ (DETR, 1998, para 3.63). Thus officers must also be considered as potential power-holders when exploring the influence of consultation on internal council relations. 6. Consultation within Oxford City Council Oxford City Council has expressed its commitment to consultation, publishing a consultation strategy Improving Oxford Together. In the strategy document, the Council commits itself to ‘consulting with people in Oxford as citizens, customers and potential customers, with our staff and people and groups affected by our policies and services.’ (Oxford City Council, 2001c). The Council has appointed a Consultation Co-ordinator, and a cross council Consultation Group to train staff and share best practice. The consultation exercises to be undertaken by the city council each year are listed in the council’s annual Consultation Plan. For the 2001-02 period, 42 consultation exercises were listed, to be run by 25 different officers, and these cases were used as the data set for the research in this paper. Whilst this does not represent a large sample size, it has the advantage of being comprehensive across the case study council.
7 One interviewee reported that, with the exception of decisions on planning, the area committees in
Oxford had taken only one decision – on the naming of a street – in the six months.
9
In order to evaluate the consultation exercises, telephone interviews were conducted with the 25 officers, using a structured questionnaire. A further nine in-depth interviews were done with officers, selected to cover the range of methodologies used to consult. Interviews were also conducted with six councillors, from all the major parties and from both the executive board and the backbenches. Interview findings were cross-checked against internal and public documentation relating to the consultation exercises. Evaluating consultation exercises in this way does encounter certain problems. Firstly, since the cases are sampled according to the exercises listed by officers, it is clear that officer involvement will be high. There is also a possibility that interviewees will misrepresent their actions to emphasise the public rather than organisational benefits of consultation. Studying the extent to which consultation is a resource for different groups of actors also raises the issue of observable power, and the degree to which powerful actors mask their influence by keeping items off the consultation agenda. A range of data sources has been used in an attempt to uncover inconsistencies through cross-case verification, but the potential for some degree of distortion remains. 7. Findings Of the 42 consultation exercises listed in the council’s Consultation Plan for 2001-02, 17 had not been done yet, and would not be done until the 2002-03 cycle. This left 25 consultation exercises, of which three were internal staff consultations, which fell outside the remit of this research. Twenty-two consultation exercises remained to be studied. The chart below shows the consultation methods used to conduct these twenty-two exercises. 8
Figure 2: Consultation techniques used by Oxford City Council
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form
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urve
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urve
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roup
mee
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N = 28
8 Some of the exercises used more than one technique; hence N = 28 cases rather than 22.
10
These findings indicate that officers used a range of techniques to reach local people, with survey methods being most popular, accounting for over half (16 out of 28) of the techniques used. Using the citizen-consumer distinction outlined above, surveys are classified as consumerist, since they require the consultee to give a one off response to a preset question. Feedback or complaint forms, which also limit the scope of consultee feedback to comments on a specific service, were used in four of the exercises. Service user group meetings also had a consumer focus. Thus 20 out of 28 techniques used can be classified as consumer rather than citizen-oriented. Techniques that allow greater consultee participation such as focus groups, indepth interviews or meetings account for the remaining eight techniques. Methods that allow ongoing deliberation or direct involvement in policy-making are lacking, suggesting that on the methodology dimension, Oxford City Council tends to engage consultees as consumers rather than citizens. In terms of internal council roles, of these 28 techniques only public meetings are likely to feature councillors playing a direct role. The rest are almost entirely officer led. The issues covered by the 22 consultation exercises demonstrate wide coverage of the policy and service areas falling under the council’s jurisdiction:
Community buildings
Parks and play areas
Crime
Planning/building
Traffic
Housing
City centre management
Retail opportunities
Neighbourhood services
Health and safety
Environment
Many of these issues have potentially both a policy and service dimension, so in order to code the consultations as being policy or service oriented, interviewees were asked to explain the purpose of the consultation exercise. On the basis of this, the exercises were categorised in one of four ways:
- service-oriented and individual in focus
- service-oriented and communal in focus
- policy-oriented and individual in focus
- policy-oriented and communal in focus The individual label was given to policy or service questions that asked consultees to give responses based on their own experience and personal preferences or priorities. The communal label was reserved for exercises that asked participants to consider the appropriate service level or policy outcome for the wider community. Thus a consultation exercise which asked respondents about their personal experience of crime was coded as policy-oriented and individual in focus. An example of a communally-focused policy consultation was a consultation on whether to move city centre management to a limited not-for-profit company. A service oriented and individual-focused consultation was undertaken with council tenants, asking for feedback on repairs. A communally-focused service-oriented consultation asked consultees about the facilities in local parks.9 Figure 3 below shows the policy/service division, broken down into individual and communally-focused consultations.
9 See the Appendix for a list all the consultation exercises with their codes.
11
Figure 3: The policy-service orientation and the individual-communal focus of consultation
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Policy Service
Individual
Communal
N = 22
As the figure shows, the consultation exercises were more likely to focus on service questions than on matters of policy (14 to 8). In the interviews some officers and councillors reported finding it easier to consult on service issues. One said of service issues, ‘That’s what the public are interested in… policy is a bit boring for most people.’ According to another, ‘The problem with policy is that people always assume that we’ve got plans up our sleeve already, that we’re asking just for the sake of it.’ The pattern of individual/communal focus of consultation was less clear – service and policy issues were equally divided in their focus indicating that service consultations are not always individually oriented as might have been expected, nor are policy consultations more likely to be communally oriented. Interviewees were also asked about the target group for the consultation exercise: whether it was service users, people living in a particular area, people with an interest in a particular issue, or a representative sample of the entire city. Figure 4 shows the target group, and indicates whether the consultation exercises were service or policy oriented.10
Figure 4: The target group for consultation
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8
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Service
user
Area Interest Total city
(sample)
Service
Policy
N = 29
10
Some exercises targetted more than one group hence N = 29 rather than 22.
12
Predictably the service user consultations tended to be service-oriented. Consultation exercises undertaken with an interested group (such as with environmental groups on the issue of air quality management) tended to have a policy focus, whereas area-focused and whole city consultations were evenly divided between service and policy consultations. Interviewees were also asked whether the consultation was a statutory requirement or discretionary, in order to gauge the extent to which officers or councillors initiated consultation or simply fulfilled a legal duty. In a sizeable minority of cases (9 out of 22), the consultation was a statutory requirement, as shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5: Statutory and discretionary consultation
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Statutory requirement Discretionary
(councillor)
Discretionary (officer)
Service
Policy
N = 22
Exercises conducted for statutory reasons included housing, tenants and air quality, and were more likely to be on service questions. Discretionary consultations were more likely to be on policy questions if initiated by councillors, and more likely to have a service focus if they were undertaken at the officers’ discretion. This may reflect the different roles between councillor and officer, with professional officers undertaking administration of council services and councillors taking policy-based decisions. Figure 6 shows the role that the consultee was asked to play in the consultation exercise.
Figure 6: Role of the Consultee
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Init
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deas
N = 22
13
The most common role was to report an experience of a particular service. Responding to a draft policy or providing information on behaviour were also common roles for consultees. Using the consumer/citizen distinction given above, the consultation exercises are evenly divided (11-11) between citizen and consultee roles. Roles that could be classified as consumerist would be those that required the consultee to report service experience and give behavioural information. Roles that would fit the citizen classification would be those in which consultees were responding to a draft policy, choosing between priorities, and initiating ideas. Within these roles there are obviously degrees of involvement, so some exercises may be more or less citizen-oriented. In no case is citizen involvement taken to the level of being asked to participate in devolved decision-making structures or to undertake self management of a service area. In order to judge the potential for consultees to shape outcomes, interviewees were asked at what stage in the decision-making process consultation was initiated. As Figure 7 below shows, consultees are rarely brought in at the earliest stages, when new ideas are being sought. Rather they tend to be to brought in to respond to draft policies or to review the effectiveness of current service provision. At these stages, consultee influence is likely to be limited to suggesting changes within a pre-determined framework.
Figure 7: Stage of using consultation
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draf
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curr
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serv
ice
Service
Policy
N = 22
The failure to bring in consultees at an earlier stage suggests that councillors or officers are reluctant to cede control over agenda-setting, and are keener to use consultation to explore options within given parameters. This would indicate that again Oxford does not score highly on the citizen-empowerment scale. The extent to which consultation findings are reported back to participants is shown in figure 8. Feedback to consultees is described by Lowndes et al as fundamental to determining whether participants see the exercise as worthwhile. In a survey of consultees, they found that, ‘The biggest deterrent to participation of all was citizens’ perceptions – or experience – of a lack of council response to consultation (Lowndes, 2001b, 452).
14
Figure 8: Feedback to consultees
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Feedback to
consultees
General public
feedback
None
N = 22
Findings from Oxford City Council indicate that specific feedback to participants was unusual (occurring in only 5 out of the 22 cases). Officers often incorporated the consultation findings into a report which was then made available to the general public, through a variety of channels such as the city council website, local libraries and via area committees. In seven of the twenty-two cases, no feedback was given at all. The cases where no feedback was given were often service-oriented consultations, which asked about user experiences of a service and were not seen to generate an expectation of further feedback. Some officers reported not giving feedback because the response rate to the exercise was so low that there was little to report. This highlights the need for consultees to be given an indication of the reliability of the findings when feedback is provided. In one consultation exercise, on tenant satisfaction with a council newsletter, a subsequent edition of the newsletter report that 81 percent of tenants were satisfied with the newsletter format, even though less than one percent of tenants had responded to the consultation exercise. Figure 9 shows what happened to the consultation data once it had been gathered. Almost half of the consultation exercises (10 out of 22) were used exclusively by the commissioning officer or other officers. In six cases, the findings were passed on to the executive board to be fed into decision-making. In some cases the findings were used by other bodies such as steering groups or partner organisations. Only in four of the 22 cases were the findings passed to area committees, where backbenchers could utilise the data in local decision-making.
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Figure 9: Internal Processing of Responses
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y
N = 22
These findings indicate that backbencher dissatisfaction with their role under the new structures, as reported by Rao (1999) and by the backbench interviewees in Oxford, is matched by a genuine marginalisation in terms of being bypassed in the consultation process. Figure 10 shows the impact of consultation exercises on policy outcomes or service delivery. Interviewees were asked to report the primary change that had happened as a result of the consultation exercise.
Figure 10: Impact of consultation exercises
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
Dir
ectl
y sh
aped
poli
cy/s
trat
egy
Ass
iste
d co
unci
l
deci
sion
-
mak
ing
Cha
nges
in
serv
ice
prov
isio
n
Tar
get
sett
ing
Cre
ated
sen
se
of c
omkm
unit
y
Non
e
N = 22
As figure 10 shows, a range of impacts were reported. In ten of the 22 cases, respondents indicated that the findings had been incorporated into policy or had led to a change in service delivery. In seven of the cases the impact was reported to be less direct – findings had been used by the council to assist decision-making or been used in target setting as
16
part of the best value requirements. In one case, the primary impact was seen to be that of creating a sense of community amongst participants rather than shaping policy-outcomes. In four of the cases, officers reported no impact at all on outcomes. In three cases this was because of a very low response rate. In one (on air quality management) the option favoured by 75 percent of consultees was rejected because it clashed with scientific advice. 8. Consultation: Who is empowered? a. Consultees: The findings discussed above analyse the citizen and consumer orientation of consultation on a range of measures, covering methodological and issue-based dimensions. Taking all of these findings into account, Figure 11 below charts the twenty-two exercises on two-dimensions. The x axis rates the exercises on the basis of method, with a negative score indicating a method with low levels of consultee participation, and positive scores indicating higher levels of participation. The y axis indicates whether the subject of consultation was a service or policy issue and whether it was communally or individually focused. The scale moves from individual/service-oriented consultations, the lowest scoring (-2), to communal/policy-oriented consultations, the highest scoring (+2).
Figure 11: The Citizen/Consumer Orientation of Consultation
-2
-1.5
-1
-0.5
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
-10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10
N = 22
Citizen-oriented issue
Cit
izen
- ori
ente
d m
eth
od
Consumer-oriented issue
Con
sum
er-o
rien
ted
met
ho
d
As the figure shows, few of the consultation exercises scored highly as being citizen-oriented in their method: few of the exercises scored highly for having an inclusive method. On the issue dimension, fourteen of the exercises were service oriented, and eight were policy oriented. In total, 7 of the 22 exercises are in the bottom left quadrant, with a consumerist method and a service issue-focus. Only three are in the top right quadrant with a citizen-oriented issue and method.
The findings indicate that the council is more willing to empower consultees in the
choice of issue rather than in the methodology used. Consultation is undertaken on matters of policy, but it is often done in ways that limit the participation of consultees. The role that local people are being asked to play has not expanded into the realm of
17
decision-making, agenda setting or initiating ideas. It is much more about giving feedback on existing services or draft policies. The value of these forms of consultation should not be underestimated, but given the radicalism of central government’s commitments on empowering communities it should be clear that this is not going to happen through these consultation exercises. Indeed, it seems that, as before, citizens are dependent on their local councillors to give them a voice – though many of these local councillors will themselves will now play a much reduced role in decision-making. b. Councillors: In the context of the new political structures, in which backbenchers play a more marginal role, there is little evidence that consultation exercises are retilting the balance of power back towards backbenchers. Councillors play a limited role in the formal consultations undertaken by the council and as before must rely on the informal links that they forge with their communities as ward representatives. The area committees, on which backbenchers play a role in taking some devolved decisions, are rarely given the opportunity to utilise consultation findings to inform decision-making. Findings are more likely to be reported to the executive board, with its wider policy-making scope, suggesting that potentially consultation could be used as a tool by the executive to undermine the representative credentials of backbenchers and claim their own channel of communication with local people. c. Officers: Officers are in a strong position, as the commissioning agent of consultation, with a degree of professional and methodological expertise which will often not be available to councillors. In many cases officers took the decision to undertake consultation and used the findings to take decisions in their own discretionary areas, giving them total control over the exercise. This may well be appropriate given the officers’ implementation function, and indeed most councillors interviewed did not report feeling that officers kept information from them or excluded them from areas that they should properly be involved in. The concern of officers is, however, with efficient service delivery and local administration. If consultation is to be used to reinvigorate local democracy and reconnect with communities, and to extend beyond administrative concerns to the policy questions it needs to involve councillors more directly in shaping the consultation exercise and utilising the findings. 9. Conclusion In answer to the question in the title of this paper, consultation in Oxford appears to be empowering consumers and cabinets rather than citizens and councillors. The limited scope of consumer action ensures that for consultees this is a relative constrained form of empowerment. As Chandler argues,
The new forums and consultation groups, through the promotion of democratic participation as little more than consciousness raising and customer feedback, are more likely to institutionalise a network of passive individuals than create or empower active citizens.
Chandler, 2000, 13
The last twelve months have been turbulent ones for Oxford City Council, with the move to the new structures, so it is possible that the full implications of the reforms are not yet clear. There are moves to strengthen the area committees which would allow an increased role for backbench councillors, and might allow local people to play a more
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direct role in decision-making about their area. The area coordinators within Oxford council – officers charged with supporting and developing the area committee structures – expressed scepticism, however, about the extent to which power would really be devolved to local levels. Since some of the area committees are controlled by opposition parties, it was seen as unlikely that the ruling coalition would willingly give away power to its opponents. Beyond Oxford, other councils are also settling into new structures, or undertaking consultation about which of the political leadership models to adopt, thus it is to early to assess the full impact of the legislative changes on the aspiration of rejuvenating local democracy. The Oxford experience suggests that, despite central government pressure, consultation need not be used in a way that engages the community in policy-shaping. Since the new executive structures are designed to centralise power within local government, it is unclear what incentives exist for cabinet members to then devolve that power, either to local people or to backbenchers councillors. The party-led model of local decision-making may well prove resilient despite legislative reform. If local councils do embrace the consultation agenda more fully in the future, some of the problems surrounding expanding consultation will have to be addressed. To be consistent with democratic imperatives consultation exercises must be transparent, representative and methodologically sound. The issue of demand must be addressed: do local people want to be consulted more? Many of the Oxford interviewees reported low levels of public interest in the council and its activities, or a willingness to let councillors ‘get on with the job’ between elections. This matches the findings of Lowndes et al in their survey of local authority chief authorities, who reported that public interest was a major inhibitor to participation. (Lowndes, 2001a, 212). Centrally imposed requirements to consult will require local authorities to think creatively about how to get around apparent public indifference. As Lowndes et al argue, ‘The challenge for local authorities, therefore, is not only to develop more and better opportunities for participation but also to stimulate demand for such initiatives across their communities’ (Lowdnes, 2001a, 212). If councils are to use consultation to reinvigorate democracy, they must first make a case to their communities about why local government matters.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Burns, D., Hambleton, R and Hoggett, P., (1994) The Politics of Decentralisation, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Cairncross, L., Clapham, D. and Goodlad, R., (1997) Housing Management, Consumers and Citizens, London: Routledge. Chandler, D., (2001) ‘Active citizens and the therapeutic state: the role of democratic participation in local government reform’, Policy and Politics, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 3-14. Cole, M., (2001a) ‘Local Government Modernisation: The Executive and Scrutiny Model’, Political Quarterly, Vol. 72, No. 2, pp. 239-245. Cole, M., (2001b) ‘Executive and Scrutiny Reforms: The Agenda and its Impact at Devon County Council’, Local Government Studies, Vol. 27, No. 4, Winter, pp. 19-34. Cooper, C. and Hawtin, M., (1997) ‘Introduction’, in Cooper, C. and Hawtin, M. (eds), Resident Involvement in Community Action, Coventry: Chartered Institute of Housing. De Montfort University/University of Strathclyde, (1998) Enhancing Public Participation in Local Government, London: DETR. Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, (1998) Modern Local Government: In Touch with the People, Cmnd 4014, London: Stationery Office. Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, (1999a) Implementing Best Value – A Consultation Paper on Draft Guidance, London: DETR Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, (1999b) Local Government Act, London: Stationery Office. Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, (1999c) Local leadership, Local Choice, Cmnd 4298, London: Stationery Office. Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, (2000) Local Government Act, London: Stationery Office. Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions, (2001) Strong Leadership, Quality Public Services, Cmnd 5327, London: Stationery Office. Dibben, P. and Bartlett, D., (2001) ‘Local Government and Service Users: Empowerment through User-Led Innovation’, Local Government Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3, Autumn, pp. 43-58. Goss, S., (1999) Managing Working with the Public, London: Kogan Page Goss, S., (2000) Evidence to the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee Inquiry into Public Participation: Issues and Innovations, Hansard, 29 March. Online. Available HTTP: http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmpubadm/79/0032904.htm
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Hirschman, A.O., (1970) Exit, Voice and Loyalty, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Leach, S. and Wingfield, M., (1999) ‘Public Participation and the Democratic Renewal Agenda: Prioritisation or Marginalisation?’, Local Government Studies, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 46-59. Local Government Management Board, (1998) Involving the Public, London: LGMB. Lowndes, V., Pratchett, L. and Stoker, G., (2001a) ‘Trends in Public Participation: Part 1 – Local Government Perspectives’, Public Administration, Vol. 79 , No. 1, pp. 205-222. Lowndes, V., Pratchett, L. and Stoker, G., (2001b) ‘Trends in Public Participation: Part 2 – Citizens’ Perspectives’, Public Administration, Vol. 79 , No. 2, pp. 445-455. Lusk, P., (1997) ‘Tenants Choice and tenant management: who owns and who controls social housing?’, in Cooper, C. and Hawtin, M. (eds), Resident Involvement in Community Action, Coventry: Chartered Institute of Housing. Martin, S., (2000) Best Value and Public Engagement, Warwick: Local Government Centre, Warwick Business School. Martin, S. and Boaz, A., (2000) ‘Public participation and the Democratic Renewal Agenda: Prioritisation or Marginalisation?’, Local Government Studies, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 46-59. Martin, S. and Davies, H., (2001) ‘What works and for whom? The competing rationalities of “Best Value”’, Policy and Politics, Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 465-75. Mullins, D., (1998) ‘Rhetoric and reality in housing policy’, in Marsh, A. and Mullins, D. (eds), Housing and Public Policy: Citizenship, Choice and Control, Buckingham: Open University Press. Niner, P., (1998) ‘Charters in housing: enhancing citizenship, promoting choice or reinforcing control?’, in Marsh, A. and Mullins, D. (eds), Housing and Public Policy: Citizenship, Choice and Control, Buckingham: Open University Press. Oxford City Council, (2001a) Best Value Performance Plan, Oxford: Oxford City Council. Oxford City Council, (2001b), The City, Winter, Oxford: Oxford City Council. Oxford City Council, (2001c), Improving Oxford Together: A Strategy for Consultation, Oxford: Oxford City Council. Rao, N., (1999) ‘Representing the People? Testing Assumptions About Local Government Reform’, Public Administration, Vol. 77, No 2, pp. 257-71. Rao, N. and Young, K., (1999) ‘Who shares New Labour’s values?’, British Social Attitudes: the 16th Report, Aldershot: Ashgate.
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Riseborough, M., (1998) ‘More control and choice for users? Involving tenants in social housing management’, in Marsh, A. and Mullins, D. (eds), Housing and Public Policy: Citizenship, Choice and Control, Buckingham: Open University Press. Seargeant, J. and Steele, J., (1998) Consulting the Public, London: Policy Studies Institute. Stewart, J., (1995) Innovations in Democratic Practice, Birmingham: Local Government Studies, University of Birmingham. Stewart, J., (1996) Further Innovations in Democratic Practice, Birmingham: School of Public Policy. Stewart, J., (1997) More Innovations in Democratic Practice, Birmingham: School of Public Policy. Stewart, J., (2000) The Nature of British Local Government, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
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APPENDIX: THE CONSULTATION EXERCISES
SERVICE ORIENTED – individual
Local neighbourhood services, usage and service experience
Town Hall, satisfaction of users
Organ Recital, satisfaction of audience
Building control, satisfaction with inspections
Tenants newsletter, satisfaction of tenants
Housing and planning, experience and expectations of service
Repairs service, satisfaction of tenants
POLICY ORIENTED – individual
Crime and disorder, experience of
crime
Traffic calming strategy, response of
residents
Health and Strategy strategy,
response of small and medium-sized
businesses
Future of Headington town centre,
attitudes of retailers and shoppers
SERVICE ORIENTED – communal
Community buildings and facilities, usage and priorities for the future
Play area strategy
Park management plan
Park user group consultation
Viability of a skate board park
Housing benefit, consultation with advice groups
Draft housing strategy, response of stakeholder groups
POLICY ORIENTED – communal
Air Quality management
Local plan for Oxford
City centre management, move to a
limited company
Area transport strategy
