The Consultation and Engagement Strategy 2023 – 2026 recognises the significant challenges currently facing the public sector. It explains how through effective consultation and engagement we can build trust, confidence and collaboration with our residents and communities, enabling North Lincolnshire Council to respond effectively to their changing needs and enable them to thrive.
The strategy builds upon processes which already exist across the council and aims to embed best practice more consistently through monitoring and sharing best practice across the council’s Consultation and Engagement Champions network. Through doing this we can maximise the benefits of good consultation and engagement for our residents and communities.
The strategy outlines how we will consult and engage and how we will move beyond informing, consulting and involving residents and communities, to collaborating and empowering residents and communities to make a real difference to their local area and ensure that the services we provide meet their needs.
The strategy also sets out the statutory duties that North Lincolnshire Council is required to meet in consulting on various matters affecting the community and ensuring that people have greater opportunities to have their say on those things that impact their lives. It details various methods of consultation and engagement and outlines the importance of planning out the most appropriate methods to deploy depending on the activity, circumstances and stakeholders.
The strategy highlights how consultation and engagement activities will be carried out in accordance with the Local Code of Corporate Governance and its key principle of ensuring openness and comprehensive stakeholder engagement.
The aims and objectives of the strategy ultimately look to ensure that North Lincolnshire residents and stakeholders understand decision-making processes and are listened to so that they can help shape the policies and services that affect them. To enable the delivery of the aims, the strategy recommends engaging early and effectively with stakeholders, increasing the number and diversity of participants and that information is provided on the outcomes of consultation and engagement activity.
Effective consultation and engagement demands particular skills, careful management and clear leadership, as a result of this, the strategy also places focus on building skills and capacity in consultation and engagement throughout the council. Through upskilling our people in effective consultation and engagement we can drive better and more cost-effective decision making and support the ambition of making North Lincolnshire the best place for our residents.
The Consultation and Engagement Strategy for 2023 – 2026 aims to support our ambition of making North Lincolnshire the best place for our residents. We want the best outcomes for the people and place of North Lincolnshire, and we want all our residents and communities to be safe, well, prosperous and connected. Our goal is to be a sustainable, enabling, commercial and progressive council so that North Lincolnshire can grow its economy, keep people safe and well and enable communities to flourish.
It is important to engage with residents and other stakeholders, particularly at a time when public services are undergoing fundamental change and resources continue to be under pressure. As a council, we currently provide wide-ranging, essential services to a diverse population and we want to engage and collaborate with people living and working in all communities so that we can establish and consider the diverse needs and perspectives of our residents.
We already engage with our residents, both on an individual basis and with communities as a whole and there is much good practice in what we do and how we do it. Teams across the council regularly hold conversations, engagement events and activities with communities and user groups to inform of changes, build knowledge and increase active participation in decision making at a local level. However, we recognise that to achieve our ambitions and priorities, we must become even better, more outward-looking and highly engaged with residents and communities. High levels of engagement will further engender public confidence and trust in the council so that North Lincolnshire Council is able to respond to the changing needs of individuals and communities and enable them to thrive.
We use consultation and engagement activity during the lifespan of the Council Plan to establish need, obtain opinion and feedback on proposed projects to identify possible courses of action to be taken to meet the priorities.
Nationally, the importance of consultation and engagement is recognised and supported by numerous pieces of legislation such as the Local Government Act 1999, the Equality Act 2010 and the Localism Act 2011. As a result of such legislation, North Lincolnshire Council has a statutory duty to consult on various matters affecting the community.
The Local Government Act 1999 places a duty on local authorities to inform, consult or involve the public. The Localism Act 2011 seeks to ensure that people have greater opportunities to have their say and aspires to embed a culture of engagement and empowerment in our public services. Under the public sector Equality Duty in the Equality Act 2010, councils must recognise the need to encourage people to take part in public life.
The Council must consider as a matter of course the possible information provision, consultation and involvement opportunities they need to provide across all their functions. The Consultation and Engagement Strategy will help the Council meet the statutory duty by ensuring that community engagement is carried out in the most appropriate way. This means using different methods of engagement, relevant to the activity and circumstances. Encouraging greater community involvement supports better decision making and builds trust between the Council and communities.
Our Council Plan for 2022 – 2025 sets out the strategic priorities of the Council over the next few years. We have ambitious plans to transform our high streets, improve our cultural offering and boost investment in employment and skills, town centre regeneration and housing. This will improve our infrastructure, support existing businesses, and attract new businesses, increase employment opportunities, and regenerate North Lincolnshire for the future. Understanding the key issues and challenges for North Lincolnshire provides a sense of purpose for all that the Council intends to do over the next few years. We will communicate the Council’s ambition to residents and other stakeholders and maintain engagement with residents and other stakeholders to ensure we can respond to changing needs and thrive.
Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have seen the absolute best of North Lincolnshire, with partners, communities, businesses and local voluntary organisations joining forces with the Council to protect, reassure and support the most vulnerable; ensure the safe operation of businesses and events and relay and reinforce key messaging. The pandemic has had many harmful impacts and shone a light on inequalities, the Consultation and Engagement Strategy will help us to build on the strengths of North Lincolnshire and start to repair the harmful effects of the pandemic and enable the area to recover, renew and regenerate.
The Council also works to its Local Code of Corporate Governance, of which one of the key principles is to ensure openness and comprehensive stakeholder engagement. This is to guarantee that the Council is run for the public good and clear, trusted channels of communication and consultation are used to engage effectively with all groups of stakeholders.
First and foremost, when thinking about engaging around a specific issue, there is a need to be clear on the difference between engagement and consultation. ‘Consultation’ is a specific and concrete term, while ‘engagement’ is a much broader and varied term.
The Local Government Association defines consultation as:
“The dynamic process of dialogue between individuals or groups, based upon a genuine exchange of views with the objective of influencing decisions, policies or programmes of action.’ (LGA, New Conversations).
Consultation has a clear beginning, middle and end. It can be part of an ongoing, continuous period of engagement, but it is a process with a finite remit and the scope for stakeholder input should be clear.
Engagement is a broader term. It is about encouraging productive, two-way relationships between communities and public bodies and can be defined as:
“Developing and sustaining a working relationship between one or more public body and one or more community group, to help them both to understand and act on the needs or issues that the community experiences. (LGA, New Conversations).
At times, it will be about working with the community to design campaigns or interventions or about asking for action and involvement. At other points it will mean seeking insight into what local people think and feel. It increasingly involves using digital technologies and seeks to make services more responsive to residents’ needs.
Community Engagement can mean different things to different people, different communities and different services and situations. We have designed our Consultation and Engagement Strategy to ensure that we can provide the most appropriate means for communities and customers to be involved and to give feedback.
The term ‘community’ refers to ‘a group of people who share a common place, a common interest, or a common identity and/or have common needs’. Communities may define themselves and definitions of community do change. People often belong to more than one community and communities are nearly always very diverse.
Good, effective consultation and engagement is not an outcome in itself; it is an ongoing process with the aim of improving services and achieving better and positive sustainable outcomes for individuals, groups, communities, and organisations.
Effective consultation and engagement provides individuals, communities and partners a range of important benefits.
Benefits of effective consultation and engagement:
In 2018, a comprehensive self-assessment of engagement activity was undertaken across the Council. The self-assessment revealed that significant engagement activity was taking place with individuals and communities and areas of excellent practice were identified.
The approach taken to public engagement taken since 2018 intended to help the council to become more outward looking, engaged and ensure its participation in even more meaningful engagement with residents. This has largely been achieved but there is still scope for improvement.
Between January and September 2022, regular engagement with residents is in evidence across the council in various different forms. In this period there were nine consultations posted on the North Lincolnshire Council website. The topics of these consultations varied from the council’s ‘Green Futures’ strategy; to the Integrated Transport Strategy for North Lincolnshire; to Future Support for Carers, amongst others. Analysis of the council’s consultation and engagement activity shows that it continues to be varied in nature, range and approach but improvements need to be made to ensure consistency in the utilisation of best practice.
The number of responses received for these consultations are detailed in Table 2 below. The number of responses received to a consultation is important because if the volume and quality of responses is too low, it can be difficult to draw any useful conclusions from the results and subsequently make it more challenging to put any effective follow-up actions and processes in place. Some of the consultations listed indicated good response levels based on the size of the target group but others had a low number of responses when considered in the context of the impact of the topics under consideration. It is also important to consider the demographics of respondents to avoid bias in the results and ensure that the results are representative and inclusive.
| Consultation | Number of responses |
|---|---|
| Barton Link Road | 676 |
| Armed Forces Consultation | 45 |
| An Integrated Transport Strategy for North Lincolnshire | 69 |
| North Lincolnshire Local Plan | 49 |
| North Lincolnshire Year of Reading 2023 | 95 |
| Future Support for Carers (Carers Questionnaire) | 174 |
| Future Support for Carers (Stakeholder Questionnaire) | 53 |
| A Green Future | 52 |
| Cliff Gardens and Exeter Road Crossroads Proposal | 30 |
The purpose of the Consultation and Engagement Strategy 2023-26 is to build on the good practice that exists across the council and develop a gold standard consultation process which incorporates the seven elements of best practice as outlined in the Consultation Institute Charter (see Figure 1):
Before, during and after a consultation process, these seven components help to steer the decision-making process and subsequently can act as a checklist for assessing the quality of consultation activity and also act as a guide for other forms of engagement. Through developing this process and continuing to monitor and share best practice, we can build on the areas of excellent practice identified and make this consistent across the council, so that the aims and objectives within this strategy can be achieved.
The Consultation and Engagement Strategy has the following aims:
The Consultation and Engagement Strategy has the following objectives that will enable the delivery of the strategy aims:
Across North Lincolnshire there are a wide range of stakeholders that we must engage and consult with at any one time. As well as being able to readily identify them, it is also important that while in the process of designing consultation and engagement activity, we attempt to understand and take account of their respective levels of interest and influence.
Residents are affected on a day-to-day basis by decisions made by the council and therefore they have the right to have a say on how those decisions are made and shape the services they use.
It is vital that consultation and engagement reaches all our residents so that everyone has the opportunity to have their voice heard. Some groups such as older people, younger people, black, Asian and minority ethnic communities and disabled people are often seldom heard, reaching such groups should be considered when undertaking any engagement activities.
These groups often have a significant impact on their local communities and should be consulted on matters affecting them and how they would like to see things in the future.
As democratically accountable bodies at the grass-roots level of local government. It is important that we work together to shape and provide high quality services for our residents and communities.
Many aspects of council decisions affect businesses directly. We want to ensure that North Lincolnshire is an attractive place for businesses to invest and grow.
North Lincolnshire has some fantastic places to visit and it is important that we continue to attract visitors and support the tourism economy.
North Lincolnshire Council can also be a consultee and respond to consultations from other government bodies in order to direct and influence policy and legislation.
In understanding the differing levels of interest and influence among such groups we can determine and plan the most appropriate means of engaging with them and the depth of activity required (see Figure 2).
Existing good practice in North Lincolnshire Council is based around the key principles of engagement – inform, consult and involve.
Inform – We provide information to our residents about our services and about decisions which may affect them.
Consult – We ask people for their views and opinions and seek feedback which is used to inform our decision-making.
Involve – We enable people to get involved and influence decisions.
To achieve our aims and objectives, we will build on the relationship that we have with residents so that we go beyond informing, consulting and involving – and incorporate collaborating and empowering; thereby adopting the model set out in Figure 3 below. We will do this through:
Figure 3: Spectrum of Public Participation (International Association for Public Participation)
Publication is one of the seven key principles of consultation. Participants in a consultation have a right to receive feedback on the final output of that consultation and on the outcome of the process. Therefore, when we have engaged and consulted with individuals or groups, it is important that we demonstrate that we have used this information in the correct manner, and that those who we have engaged and consulted with know how their involvement has made a difference.
With findings from consultation activity, we will:
Results from consultation activity will be used alongside expert advice and evidence, officer recommendations, member input and the council plan priorities to shape decision making and formulate our future plans.
The Government and other organisations regularly hold consultations with local authorities when they are looking for views on a particular issue, or if they want to change something. Seeking the views of councils and other public bodies is vital to ensure that the voices of all of society are incorporated into the policy development process. Consequently, the council will take its responsibility seriously to respond to Government or similarly led consultations. We will respond to consultations that affect us and our work and have an impact on what we are trying to achieve for our residents and the place of North Lincolnshire.
There can be several Government consultations open at one time and therefore collaboration with similar thinking organisations is a good idea. Where appropriate, we will submit joint responses to consultations with our partners to help the consultor to understand how widely and strongly views are held.
Any response will be research and evidence based.
For the past few years, North Lincolnshire Council has developed good practice in what we do and how we do it in terms of how we engage with our residents and communities. However, we recognise that to achieve our ambitions and priorities, we must become even better, more outward-looking and highly engaged with our residents and communities.
As part of our ongoing improvement and in order to measure the success of this strategy, North Lincolnshire Council will need to be able to demonstrate that:
| Information Marking | Official |
| Document Title | Consultation & Engagement Strategy 2023-2026 |
| Head of Service | James O’Shaughnessy |
| Lead Officer | Sophie Day |
| Version | |
| Status | Approved |
| Date Approved | 15.06.2023 |
| Last Updated | |
| Review Date | Annual |
| Storage Location | Consultation & Engagement Champions |