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UK air quality management
legislation requires local authorities to ‘consult’ at every stage of the
process. Our experience in Bristol is that ‘consultation’ is
probably sufficient whilst dealing with the technical processes of Review and
Assessment but that genuine public participation through focus groups and
questionnaire surveys are essential in establishing acceptable actions for
inclusion in the action plan.
Following
our adoption of sustainable development in the early 1990’s we have adopted the
practise of producing draft documents which are then widely circulated to an
‘expert’ database of interested persons and other outlets for comments prior to
our final ‘glossy’ document production. Every published document also contains
feedback information so we can learn to do better in future. Every consultation
exercise genuinely allows the respondent to affect the final outcome, ie
influence the final shape of policy or action.
After
some 10 years of experience the City of Bristol is able to judge whether
consultation or participation is the most appropriate course of action, but
occasionally we still get it wrong! Generally the more technical the document
and the more closely it is controlled by government guidelines, the more
appropriate it is for consultation methods. Conversely the more ‘blue sky’ and
for issues directly affecting residents then participation methods are adopted
at an early stage. Unfortunately participative methods are time consuming and resource
intensive and do not always ‘fit’ into statutory timescales. Some legislation
also prescribes the consultation to be followed.
We use a
citizen jury of 2000 citizens for both techniques, tested from time to time by
a 5% household survey. We use our interested party database again for both
techniques and again this is tested by a 5% household survey. We also draw on
the interested party list for producing focus groups to discuss issues in much
more detail.
Consultation/Participation
panels are also set up for major development. Here we can discuss amelioration
and mitigation after Planning Permission is granted. We try to focus on those
areas where resident’s views can make a genuine positive difference to
outcomes.
So the
answer to ‘Consultation and Participation –where and How?‘ is: wherever
possible and when resources allow.
It is
possible to make major developers responsible for funding this through the
planning agreement or section 106 agreement.
There are
sometimes statutory limitations of time but statutory consultees are often
listed making our jobs easier.
Setting
up citizens panels, focus groups and organising random surveys are well
worthwhile even where this work is subcontracted to consultants or in house
marketing specialists.
Locally
based facilitators are often cheaper and more committed to the local community
when organising focus groups to consider complex local issues.
Consultation
and Participation add another layer of complexity and expense to air quality
issues but invaluable for identifying what is and is not acceptable to the
public, and enable red herrings to be chopped off at an early stage! |