The Consultation process is flawed

The consultation process has been flawed from the start, so that the proposals in the Consultation Document reflect the interests of a single pressure group. The way in which the proposals were presented, and the very short time allowed for responses, could not have been better designed to force a favourable reaction from respondents. Why?

A proper consultation process might:

1. In an initial, widely-publicised, phase, define the purpose of the consultation and invite the community to provide opinions and suggestions.
   
   
2. Develop proposals based on the results of the initial phase and set them out in a consultation document. This would state the aims of the proposals and should contain a full assessment of their likely effects
   
   
3. Put the document to the community and invite responses.
   
   
4. Reach decisions based on these responses.

Judged against these standards the consultation process has failed:

1. The initial phase.
   The way this was conducted meant that only the pressure group that had forced the Council to initiate the process knew what was going on. The poster inviting people to participate in the first phase by writing to the Council before August 19th, or by meeting the Working Group on two dates in September, was sent to schools at the very end of the summer term. In some, if not most, schools the poster was never distributed in book bags. So the first thing most people knew of the process was in early November, when the 'Consultation Document' came home in book bags.
   
   Inevitably, as a member of the Working Group has confirmed to us, the input from the community (both written, and oral at the two September sessions) came almost exclusively from members of the pressure group. The dice were therefore loaded outrageously in favour of this group. Whether this was by accident or design, we cannot say. However it is well-known that the best way to ensure that as few people as possible respond to a consultation process is to conduct it during the summer holidays. Even better, if you want a particular result, is to make sure that your favoured group is in the know.
   
   
2. The consultation document
   This document fails to set out its aims, referring vaguely to an 'improvement' to be expected from the proposed changes. There is no impact assessment whatever, so it is impossible to identify gainers and losers, still less any expected effects on congestion, numbers of children walking to school, safety, pollution, or socially disadvantaged groups in the community. Instead, one major effect of the proposals, that of simply reallocating places at oversubscribed schools in the City from one group of parents to another, is dressed up in terms of providing the gaining group of parents with more 'choice'.
   
   Small wonder then, that most parents found the document very confusing and that Head Teachers in some schools felt obliged to send out covering letters and maps to try to make things clearer.
   
   
3. The responses
   Parents were given a maximum of 28 days to return the consultation document. Because of delays in its distribution, perhaps resulting from a need some Head Teachers felt to try to explain what the document meant, parents in one large school had only about a week to absorb the document and get their responses back.
   
   The deadline was November 29, but the Working Group will also take into account input from a 'Stakeholder Group' of parents that met on Nov 2, Nov 23, and Dec 14. The bias in the intitial phase of the process has been carried over into the group itself: for instance, its Terms of Reference state: 'Members will be drawn from parents who presented their views to the Working Group or will have been nominated by members of the City Council or school governing bodies'.
   
   
4. The decisions
   The Working Group has to make its recommendations to the Children, Families and Schools Committee of the Council by end December [now 23 January]. In other words, it has given itself just a month, including Christmas, to absorb the messages from over 3000 returned Consultation Documents (plus other direct submissions) and the Stakeholder Group AND to come up with recommendations which apparently don't have to be just 'yes' or 'no' to each of the three questions in the document.