Ask us no questions - we're customers

An almost non-story which briefly appeared in the press earlier in the week was the publication of recent study findings that few people in Wales feel that they can influence the decisions that affect their lives – but may not necessarily want the ability to do so anyway.

The Citizen’s Views on Public Services report is admittedly not the most riveting of reads, which probably explains why the press have accepted the official take that whilst people feel unable to get involved in decisions on the running of council and health services, most respondents said they did not want such involvement. The inference drawn is that this indicates a high level of customer satisfaction across a range of public services.

This last conclusion, which has been unsurprisingly embraced by public services minister Andrew Davies, is based upon the survey findings but there is a more than a suspicion that the outcome is actually a further indication of disengagement.

This is despite continued attempts to make the connections, as seen with one local ‘initiative’ that recently sneaked under the radar and which rejoices in the name of the Swansea Consultation Partnership. This is apparently a collection of eight public bodies operating in the locality who have decided to pool resources in meeting their aims of “greater overall citizen engagement, more citizen focussed service planning and demonstrable evidence based decision making”.

It is a commendable step forward and one that might even represent the kind of joined-up thinking that used to be so popular once upon a time - but is it also just another example of an overly structured approach which entirely suits the purposes of the bodies doing the consultation rather than those being consulted?

A collective methodology is fine as long as it also involves getting out into the community and actually asking questions. Relying on proactive responses to register on a website so as to inform social policy can be just as flawed as thinking that daytime TV audiences are a representative sample of the wider population. There are plenty of opinion-polling companies out there who will say the same.

Even then, the Partnership will need to do a lot more to convince the punters that the consultation is meaningful activity which can actually inform decisions – and is not just an exercise of going through the proverbial. This is especially true in the case of Swansea Council, whose own Consultation Strategy still refers to a policy development process involving cabinet advisory committees & performance review boards that have not existed for several years.