Accurate picture of residents' budget priorities
The challenge
Cheshire West and Chester Council (CWAC) are faced with the huge challenge of a £57m budget reduction over four years, after already making significant savings. That represents around a fifth of the Council's net spend.
Making savings on this scale has a real impact on the services and amenities that local residents use. The Council knew that before making difficult budget decisions, it would be vital to start an honest dialogue with residents on their views and priorities.
The approach
The council embarked on an extensive, multi-method consultation process over three months, called 'Let's Talk'. They ran business breakfasts, 10 focus groups across the area, sent out 600+ paper questionnaires, two online questionnaires and used the Delib Budget Simulator.
Around 4,000 people viewed the Budget Simulator, with several hundred people completing the budget-balancing challenge in full. CWAC received around 2,000 responses across all of these methods, a higher response rate than in previous years. This mixed methodology was well received by Councillors, Partner organisations and residents. Of the methods used, CWAC found the online Budget Simulator to be beneficial for providing real-time analysis throughout the consultation.
The results
'Let's Talk' gave the Council great insight into residents' concerns and priorities, with the Budget Simulator also helping people to see the potential value in raising Council Tax. Headline findings included: Strong support for the council's proposed priorities; Services for the most vulnerable people rated as particularly important; An increase in Council Tax generally supported; Those who completed the Budget Simulator opted to raise Council Tax by an average of 2.4%.
Importantly, CWAC also used all the responses gathered through 'Let's Talk' to inform their new Council Plan: Helping the Borough Thrive.
Budget Simulator was an important part of 'Let's Talk'. It visualised the challenges faced by local government in an effective and engaging way, but more importantly it provided an accurate picture of residents' priorities. The simulator, alongside the wider approach of Let's Talk has ensured that the Council's Budget and Four Year Plan have been designed around our residents' views.
Delib is a govtech leader specialising in consultation and engagement, trusted by over 600 government organisations worldwide, including major planning projects. Since 2004, we've been building secure, accessible digital platforms to make participation simpler, fairer, and more inclusive. Our flagship product, Citizen Space, was built in collaboration with the UK government and has supported more than 11 million responses across over 110,000 democratic activities.