Involving citizens in ongoing decision-making
The challenge
The London Borough of Southwark is keen to get its residents involved in ongoing decision-making as much as possible.
They invest a lot of time and resource to consulting in an effective and inclusive way. For example, in 2017, they ran a broad-scope, ambitious consultation called the Southwark Conversation, seeking the public’s input on change across the whole borough, and what type of future residents imagined for their home. From housing to apprenticeships, nearly 3000 people shared their views.
The consultation team did a huge amount of work ensuring that underrepresented groups got to have a say, talking to hundreds of people face-to-face and in other innovative ways, like over the radio, via telephone and in community meetings. But the largest response rate by far was received online, through Citizen Space.
Citizen Space is designed for online consultation activity on any scale. From huge exercises like the Southwark Conversation to smaller, more localised issues like residents’ parking schemes, it enables an organisation to consult in ways that enable openness and accountability to their citizens. It has a range of features that support consultation activity of any kind; for example, the ability to embed related events, documents and supporting information into the overview page of an online consultation. This means, when running non-online consultation activity, the overview page acts as a central hub for all related events and information.
The approach
Citizen Space is designed with this in mind, so sharing feedback is both simple for the administrator and clear and visible for citizens. One of the features that Southwark uses is ‘We Asked, You Said, We Did’.
The results
Southwark Council recognise that a consultation doesn’t end with the survey’s closing date. It’s a continuous process, and feeding back to citizens is an essential component. Not only does it keep citizens informed on what changes will take place, it validates the time the public has invested in sharing their views. Feeding back increases legitimacy and, as a result, trust in public bodies.
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.