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www.publicspace.org.uk > public consultation and engagement 
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Public Consultation & Engagement
Contact: Dr Kathleen Cross
As policy-making is increasingly informed by expert input (professional and commercial), so consultation and engagement with practitioners and the public similarly become an increasingly vital input.
Good public consultation includes explicit discussion of what is in the public interest. It offers the opportunity for policy to be informed by public and practitioner experience, and by societal values. It can contribute to the wisdom and the practical feasibility of policy, as well as its legitimacy.
Why PublicSpace?
The PublicSpace team bring training and experience in social science research, along with experience in public consultation, public engagement through the arts, and adult education. We know from that experience that the quality and value of the insights gained depend on the quality of the interactions, analysis and reporting.
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We focus on engaging citizens on complex scientific, technical and social issues, and our aim is to enable informed and considered public responses. We don't simply reproduce favoured methods, but develop and adapt from a repertoire of approaches according to the aims and intended outcomes of the public engagement, and according to how the participants might best understand and talk about the issues in question.
As our name 'PublicSpace' implies, we are committed to the wider outcomes of public engagement in terms of participatory governance. That includes contributing to maintaining institutional and public capacity to engage in meaningful public discussion of complex policy issues.
Public consultation
PublicSpace is experienced in designing and writing information and consultation documents intended to inform, enable and encourage public and professional / institutional comment and discussion. We bring expertise in making scientific and technical information accessible to a non-expert public and policy readership. This includes exploring with institutional experts the background concepts and issues that they may take as given, but which others may need to understand and engage with.
We also critically review public information and consultation documents by others. |
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For example:
PublicSpace designed and wrote the 2005 Public Consultation Document on the management of radioactive wastes for the UK Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM). This involved the full development of the document content from source documents and initial emails by CoRWM members and Defra officers, through to preparing the final printer-ready copy. It involved collaboration and review with CoRWM members and Defra officers. The document was welcomed for its engaging design and clarity of information by CoRWM, by education officers, and by the institutions and public taking part.
PublicSpace analysed and reported the public and institutional responses. The 400 responses ranged from extended institutional responses to brief emails, and the respondents ranged from BNFL to FoE, from nuclear consultants to local councils, from independent experts to associations to lay members of the public.
Our reports maximise direct quotation to provide an accurate, authoritative and informative synthesis for CoRWM, intended to act as a lasting record for future processes to build on rather than repeat. The online pdf reports offer the reader three levels of detail: an overview report offers a bullet-point summary of the issues raised; it links to annex reports (eg on implementation) which quote from the responses; these in turn link to 48 of the original responses (eg from NuLEAF).
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Public discussion events
Public discussion groups and citizen panels enable deliberation, and they therefore move public participation and consultation beyond the exchange and reporting of prior opinions and information. They enable participation and considered responses from people who have had the opportunity and the time to understand and discuss the issues. Good discussion, reported well, can offer policy makers better insight into societal values, and into the specific reasons, values and experience people draw on when responding to a policy proposal.
PublicSpace brings experience in facilitating, analysing and reporting public deliberation. This includes facilitating interactions between professionals and publics with different relations to policy, and with different assumptions, experience, interests and concerns. Our methods acknowledge and draw out the complexities and subtleties in discussions, since these often indicate shared underlying concerns and may offer ways forward. Our analysis and reporting is based on detailed listening and noting during discussions, repeated with recordings. As an ethical principal and in pursuit of quality, we also report our analysis to the participants.
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For example:
PublicSpace jointly facilitated (with Lancaster University) CoRWM’s 2005 Citizen Panels. The citizens met over 2-3 days, and discussions included questioning experts from nuclear industry, regulators and environmental groups. (Reported by colleagues at Lancaster University.)
We facilitated public discussion groups for the MoD’s 2001 ISOLUS consultation (for Lancaster University). We analysed and reported nine discussions, each time maximising direct quotation so that the Steering Group and MoD could themselves read engaging public comment and better understand public thinking.
Members of the ISOLUS steering group commented that the discussions and reporting had broken new ground in showing that valuable insight could be gained from public consultation even on complex technological issues. (Example report of a group facilitated and reported by S. Pardoe.) |
Encouraging wider public debate
While government and media often refer to a need for a public debate, it is usually less clear how this happens in the public domain beyond the media. PublicSpace are interested in developing ways of enabling wider public debate. We bring experience of researching public debate, of facilitating debate and of providing materials to enable others to initiate and facilitate that debate.
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For example:
We developed on-line resources to enable local public comment and encourage debate in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war.
The website suggested a process which echoed the tying of notes to the railings at ‘ground zero’ in New York. It suggested inviting people to express their thoughts, insights and concerns about the war publicly (both for and against) - by writing and tying a label to railings in their town or village.
The website offered inspiration and guidance for the initiator / facilitator, plus materials to print to get started locally. It also included links to background information, and sources of labels. We added our own diary of the experience of piloting it in a local town with photos. Later it also included photos sent in by others.
It was taken up individuals, churches, schools and groups around the UK, generating events in Edinburgh, Nottingham, Cambridge, London and smaller towns and villages from Devon to Essex. It was reported by the BBC.
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