Agenda item

Briefing Note of the Director of Public Health and Wellbeing

Councillor G Duggins, Cabinet Member for Policy and Leadership has been invited to the meeting for the consideration of this item

The Committee considered a Briefing Note of the Director of Health and Well-Being, together with a presentation at the meeting, which outlined the current consultation process and activities used in the promotion of consultations.

The Insight Engagement Team provides an oversight and advisory role across the Council and works with service area leads to ensure that methods used are fit for purpose, that the Council seeks to engage with people that are most affected and involve stakeholders with an interest in the outcomes. A Consultation Plan Template was appended to the Briefing Note.

There is a dedicated Engagement Manager for Regeneration, Highway, and Air Quality schemes who is involved throughout the duration of the project and is a member of the Project Teams. A consultation process document was also appended to the report.  Additionally, there is a Children’s Champion who focuses on consultations with young people.

All consultations involve working closely with the Community Resilience and Engagement and the Communications teams, as well as the service areas themselves. Discussions are held outlining possible online promotion, offline promotion, and community network engagement opportunities. In the case of large-scale citywide consultations, communication/engagement action plans are produced.

The Briefing Note indicated that whilst every endeavour is made to promote all consultation/engagement opportunities as widely as possible, there is no guarantee that people will want to engage and take part.

The presentation covered:-

•  The principles of consultation

•  Dynamic dialogue between individuals or groups

•  Genuine exchange of views with the objective of influencing and informing decisions, policies, or programmes of action

•  NB: There is a decision to be made and opportunity to influence this 

•  Engagement

•  Actions or processes undertaken to establish effective relationships with individuals or groups so that more specific interactions can then take place

•  Aim is to foster effective relationships.

•  Consultation is undertaken to give stakeholders a genuine opportunity to influence the Council’s decision making and the follow apply:

•  Consult when there is a legitimate expectation to do so

•  Consult before taking decisions when proposals are still at a formative stage

•  Provide enough information for intelligent consideration

•  Allow enough time for responses to be made

•  Decision makers to consciously consider the findings 

·  Information relating to “Lets Talk Coventry” – the Council’s engagement platform which hosts all consultations

·  How the Insight Team provide guidance and support to service areas to ensure that there are both offline/online mechanisms opportunities to enable the public to participate in consultations

·  Areas identified for improvement:-

•  Continue to work to ensure consistency of approach to consultation across all Council departments through supporting best practice

•  Consistently share findings and intelligence from consultations both internally and with partners if appropriate

•  Improve feedback mechanisms: “you said, we did”

•  Mobilise wide range of internal and partner networks to promote consultations as appropriate

The Committee asked questions, sought assurances, received answers and made comments on a number of issues including:-

•  How best to change the perception that consultations are tick box exercises and the provision of case studies to assist with this

•  The use of Citizens Assembly Panels to assist with consultation. It was noted that these have been used by the Council in the past for specific consultations

•  The need to use a wide range of mechanisms to reach as many different members of the public as possible, rather than just attracting responses from the same group of people

•  The Committee noted that often there is a significant amount of work undertaken to engage with and consult with service users/key partners before a formal consultation takes place, which may explain lower responses to formal consultations

•  Applying the One Coventry approach to consultations. It was noted that the One Coventry Plan Refresh was on the Committee’s Work Programme

•  In relation to questions regarding resourcing of the Team, it was noted that the Team provides a core service to Departments and shares knowledge, expertise and good practice across the Council

•  Engagement with partners across the City via Communications groups

•  The use of “Jam Boards” to communicate messages

•  Engagement with local, regional and national broadcaster

RESOLVED that the Scrutiny Co-ordination Committee:-

1)  Notes the information provided in the Briefing Note

2)  Requests that details of consultations on the Council’s website

 are forwarded to the Political Groups

3)  Requests that the Committee receives details on the proposed public consultation process for the One Coventry Plan as part of the report on that Plan to be considered by the Committee as part of their Work Programme for 2022/23