Consultation Night-Mayor

Article published: Saturday, September 19th 2009

A Mule readers survey has cast doubt on the credibility of Manchester City Council’s Governance Consultation. 88% of respondents have not received consultation leaflets from the Council. 79% were unaware that a consultation is taking place.

It’s now September 21st, which means that you, dear readers, must be feverishly working away filling out your consultation forms in time for the 22 September deadline. ‘What consultation?’ I hear you say. Surely you must have received notice from the council about the chance to “have your say in the way we run our city” by commenting on whether we should have an elected mayor as council leader, or keep things as they are now?

The Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 stipulates that the council must review the way it is governed prior to the next local elections (May 2010). The government hopes that this will “give local people more influence over the services and decisions that affect their communities.”

As a start, the council are getting us to influence how we have more influence, by way of a consultation over whether or not an elected mayor would be a good idea. This involves us indicating which of the two options we prefer, and adding any extra comments or suggestions. Sounds good? Read on!

Public consultations have begun to receive a lot of criticism. Detractors claim they give a misleading democratic gloss to decisions authorities would have taken anyway, giving communities the perception of having more power, while the reality is business as usual.

In this case, it’s easy to agree. For starters, most people don’t even know there’s a consultation going on. In a survey of 112 Mule readers conducted this week, 79% of respondents were unaware of any consultation taking place.

The council’s main publicity tool for the consultation has been a glossy leaflet, which they claim has been “sent out to households across the city and are also available in Libraries, Leisure Centres, Parks, Sure Start Centres, Job Centres, Citizens Advice Bureaus, Adult Education and Community Centres.” There’s also an online version. Hard to miss these leaflets then? Apparently not, 88% of respondents claimed not to have received them through their door.

It’s hard to feel included when you’re not sure what you’re being included in. The consultation has been underway since 27 July and still most people in the city are apparently unaware that they’re being consulted at all. Domino’s pizza do better promotion than this – except for them it’s stuffed crusts rather than the future of local democracy at stake. It will be interesting to see if the council release figures showing how many people responded.

Even for those in the know, there’s little clear incentive to participate. There is no promise that the option with the most ‘votes’ will be chosen, only that the results will be given “due consideration” by council leaders. It’s a good job in a way, because there’s apparently nothing to stop one person who gets their hands on a pile of leaflets sending in a thousand of them. For those who bother to write extra comments, there is no guarantee whatsoever that these comments will be acted upon, merely that they will be considered; we just have to trust in the virtue of council leaders drawing up the proposals behind closed doors.

So really, why bother? It’s out of our hands. These proposals will go to a council meeting on the 2 December, where, we suspect, just for a change, the assembled councillors will vote in a disciplined manner according to their party line. Thanks to this phoney exercise in public participation, whatever decision they make will have the seal of democratic approval, because we’ve been thoroughly consulted.

According to government studies undertaken prior to the 2007 Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act, 61% of people felt they had “no influence over decisions affecting their local areas”. If this is the council’s idea of letting us “have our say”, it’s no wonder.

If you haven’t received a leaflet and want one, or want to voice your concerns about the credibility of the consultation, call 0161 234 4269

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Comments

1. Can’t say I’m surprised – It’s pretty convenient for the council if nobody responds to these things. Lots of consultations seem very under-publicised and ambiguous as to their purpose – it means, as the article said, that they can just go ahead and make the same decision you would have done anyway.

   On a national level you’ve had whitewahing excercises like this over GM and Nuclear power.

   Comment by lou on September 21, 2009 at 11:33 pm

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