How organisations can reduce risk in statutory consultations

man stands in front of a group of seated people giving a speech

Statutory consultations are a vital part of our democratic system, providing citizens and key stakeholders with the ability to make their position known to government and relevant organisations. That’s why it’s important that the public bodies running consultations get the process right. There are risks associated with the consultation process that therefore must be accounted for and mitigated where possible.

Dealing with evidential risks

Evidential risk arises when consultation outputs are not treated as formal records. In the context of a statutory consultation, responses should never be treated as informal comments or feedback. They form part of the evidence base that supports and justifies decision-making, and should always be considered using the formal framework.

This is true even when a response is:

Very short.
Written in an informal manner.
Appears to have been copied from elsewhere, or generated using AI.
Seems irrelevant.

When engaging with feedback in a statutory consultation, all feedback must be logged correctly regardless of any subjective view of relevance or quality. If all evidence submitted to a consultation cannot be clearly traced, verified and reproduced, a consultation outcome becomes vulnerable to legal challenge.

Common causes of evidential risk

Evidential risk rises considerably when data handling is done across multiple channels following differing processes and standards. For example, evidence being submitted to multiple email inboxes, having various locations where submitted evidence is stored (digitally or otherwise), or manually copying data between different systems. With each new location and person that is introduced into the data entry and validation process, a new potential for error is introduced. Over time, the likelihood of some evidence being lost, mislabeled or misused increases.

A good way to avoid this is to have a single, well structured process. When consultations follow clearly defined workflows, evidence is stored and handled consistently and can be easily linked correctly alongside consultation questions.

The key to defensibility and avoiding evidential risk is to show clear, repeated patterns that have been applied equally to all contributions. It is also helpful to then maintain these standards across different consultations, particularly when they relate to a similar topic or address a similar audience. This is particularly useful for effective auditing and internal process reviews, as well as when scrutinised by external bodies to ensure regulatory compliance.

Types of process risks

showing participatory mapping on a laptop screen

Process risks are risks that occur due to processes being followed incorrectly or inconsistently, they increase when a consultation relies on individual knowledge. In many organisations, statutory consultation processes are held together by a small number of facilitators who understand what needs to happen, when and why. There are two problems with this:

Risk 1: Process fragility

Staff leave jobs, become unwell or can forget things. If only one person knows how to set up the right form, or the contact details for important statutory consultees, a system that seems to work well could easily collapse under very little pressure.

Risk 2: Process drift & inconsistencies

Secondly, it creates idiosyncrasies in the process. If a certain facilitator has always done something a certain way, they’re likely to continue even long after it has stopped being best practice. When processes are undocumented or inconsistently applied, small deviations can introduce significant risk. Deadlines may be missed, statutory consultees overlooked, or required reporting steps delayed. These issues are not always visible during delivery, but can surface later under scrutiny.

Again, the key to avoiding these issues is to create well-documented processes that can be understood by anyone who may need to repeat them in future. This takes away a considerable risk of human fallibility, and also makes oversight considerably easier. When a process can be easily understood by everyone involved – particularly governance – it makes it more likely that issues will be spotted early in the process, rather than later through legal scrutiny.

Good consultations require experts and the dedication of staff to make sure they run well, but they don’t need to run on the specific expertise and memory of individuals. Instead, they can rely on well developed processes.

When do accessibility and inclusion risks grow?

Accessibility and inclusion risk grows when it is handled on a case by case basis. Statutory consultations are expected to be accessible to everyone who may want to contribute to them. Accessibility must not be viewed as another risk to be managed, but rather a core component of how consultations are designed.

Inclusivity too means creating consultations where access is equitable rather than equal. That means everyone should have the same ability to engage with the process, rather than everyone being given the same tools.

Minimum standards for accessible consultations

There are various steps to designing a consultation that is accessible and inclusive. The key points are:

Ensuring materials are available in accessible formats (e.g other languages, large text, etc).
If a consultation is taking place online, it must be WCAG 2.2 compliant.Which covers various things, like being compatible with a screen reader.
Planning engagement activity to reach groups that are typically less represented in similar consultations.

Avoiding risk when it comes to accessibility is usually a matter of ensuring processes have been followed consistently. If each consultation takes a different approach to accessibility, there is a risk of inconsistent and unrepresentative results. Some materials may meet standards, while others may fall short, which creates a significant risk of challenge.

Creating a plan for accessibility, and then using established templates and workflows designed during that process in each consultation can help standardise accessibility. This is made particularly easier when using purpose-built engagement platforms, as these templates and workflows can be saved and replicated easily for each subsequent activity.

Repeatable workflows improve consistency

Repeatable workflows are an effective way to reduce risk and ensure consistency across statutory consultations. In Citizen Space, these workflows can be built into activity templates that define how consultations are designed, delivered and reviewed, ensuring that the same standards are applied every time.

Repeatability does not mean running identical consultations. Instead, templates provide a structured decision-making framework that helps facilitators identify when specific actions are required. For example, if response data shows that a particular demographic group is underrepresented, predefined workflows can trigger additional engagement activity, such as targeted outreach or a public meeting in a specific area.

By using repeatable workflows and activity templates, organisations can combine consistency with flexibility. The overall process remains defensible and auditable, while still allowing consultations to adapt to emerging issues as they arise. This approach reduces reliance on individual judgement and ensures that decisions to amend or extend engagement activity are made transparently and consistently across consultations.

The long shelf life of public scrutiny

Longevity and scrutiny can expose weaknesses long after consultations close. While a lot of what public bodies do happens behind the scenes, and even publicly available information is unlikely to be read by anyone bar the person typing it up, that is not the case with consultations. Often, statutory consultations are contentious. It may involve controversial new developments, arguments over land rights and responsibilities, planning permissions where one side is likely to profit from decisions made as a result of the consultation.

This means that statutory consultations are likely to face a great deal of public scrutiny, and that scrutiny can remain for many years. For example, for a large housing development, a consultation completed at the Local Plan stage is likely to be referred to and debated over many years as it reaches various stages (planning permission, land clearance, initial development, infrastructural works, etc).

Long term risk from short-term workarounds

This long shelf life means that short-term workarounds or temporary fixes can create long-term risks. Informal or uneven processes that appear to work at the time may not stand up to later examination, particularly if staff have moved on or systems have changed. Particularly, evidential and process related risks that relied on the abilities of specific individuals to understand and navigate a complex system are risky when asked to justify decisions made more than a decade ago.

Consistent, well-documented processes can mitigate this risk. By ensuring records remain comprehensive even when organisational context is lost, some of the human error potential is reduced. Having a standardised procedure for reporting can allow organisations to explain decisions long after the consultation has ended.

Managing risk with purpose-built engagement platforms

Sutton council consultation hub screenshot

When consultations were largely conducted either as pen-and-papers tasks, or via a variety of unrelated online portals, risks related to inconsistency or missing evidence were almost unavoidable. However, in recent years the growth of citizen engagement platforms like Citizen Space have significantly reduced these risks. As a GovTech platform designed for consultations, it can:

Built-in consistency

Using a single purpose-built platform makes consistency and repeatability the default. The structure of the consultation, response formats and reporting processes create standardised (and comparable) reports across platforms. By reducing variation between consultations, it is easier to demonstrate consultation processes are fair.

On Citizen Space, standardised templates can be used for consultations that can then be repeated to ensure there is minimal space to introduce error.

Be used for every stage in the process

A purpose-built consultation platform should be able to support the full consultation process. From drafting and publishing contextual information, to inviting citizen input, to analysing and responding to data. By capturing evidence and providing responses in one place, the risks of gaps forming between stages is reduced. Facilitators can easily see the whole process in a single system, which makes it less likely for parts of the process to be overlooked.

Accessibility as design

When using any kind of GovTech, accessibility should be factored into the design. Platforms like Citizen Space ensure WCAG-compliance in templates and have clear guides on how to make consultations accessible to legal standards. This reduces the requirements for organisations to make ad hoc adjustments to their engagement processes, but also makes identifying the need for an adjustment far simpler.

“Citizen Space has greatly improved the quality and quantity of consultations that we run. The fact that we can have unlimited site admins means that lots of different departments are on board, and having a standardised method of consultation has made the process easier for us and our citizens.”

– Dublin City Council

Citizen Space is the go-to govtech platform for engaging with citizens, managing large scale government consultations and simplifying statutory processes. If you’d like to learn more about how our software can be used to avoid survey fatigue, book a free demo today.

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