A better budget consultation: Simulator boosts engagement
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The challenge
The London Borough of Waltham Forest had run major consultations in 2010 and 2012 which identified corporate priorities and key budget commitments. Following this work, the Council wanted to consult on both budgets and priorities together, to inform their planning for the next three years.
The Council had previously tried other kinds of online budget consultation. However, participants didn't find these easy to use, and the response rate struggled accordingly. This time around, Waltham Forest were keen to boost the levels of participation.
The approach
They chose to deploy Budget Simulator – finding that it was more user-friendly, and helped residents better understand the consultation.
Carla Seabury, Insight and Consultation Manager for the London Borough of Waltham Forest, says: 'many residents praised the Budget Simulator for making it easy for them to understand and complete. A number explained that they didn't realise how difficult a job the Council had when setting the budget and having to save money and that the Simulator helped them to understand this'
The results
With high expectations for citizen engagement, Waltham Forest were really pleased with the result of the consultation: more than 1,200 people responded via Budget Simulator. These responses were compiled into a report to the Cabinet, which was then also made available to the public.
Budget Simulator helped residents to understand how challenging it is for the Council to manage the deficit and the difficult decisions that need to be made in order to balance the books. The platform enabled residents to easily take part in the consultation, by consolidating all the information they needed to know and by making clear the consequences of their decisions
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.