Based on my experience over recent years:1) If the council wants to implement a change, they don't do a consultation unless they absolutely have to. E.g. some kind of statutory requirement. 2) If the council does not want to implement a change, they say lack of response, or too few responses in favour of a change, means no change.3) If the council wants to implement a change, they do a consultation then, if they achieve a low response in their favour, they lump together groups to improve results in their favour (e.g. results for central acton streets not affected by parking probs joined with streets closer to stations, to get the overall result they want). And don't give adequate consideration for reasons behind poor levels of response (e.g. addressing consultation to home owners and landlords, not tenants, e.g. failure to deliver consultation forms to some addresses, e.g. lack of confidence people have that the council will take heed of residents views (frequently negative views) affecting willingness to participate in consultation).4) If the council want to implement change they present a limited number of carefully thought out options on the consultation form in order to skew the results in favour of the option they want to proceed with. Ie they often include other options that have significant drawbacks, omit options that might prove popular, and frequently fail to include a 'no change' option.5) If the council are only doing a consultation to prove a point in their favour they announce their plans as a fait-a-complis even before the consultation period is over, and limit the publicity around the consultation happening. Often with a lot of positive spin publicity attached, and total disregard for the downsides of their proposals. This means the general local population is not well informed, and lacks opportunity to be involved in the consultation process.6) If the results of the consultation are not robust, eg not strongly in favour of the council’s desired outcome, or have low response levels, they sit on the findings for months on end, without explanation, rather than be transparent and publish.7) If the council achieves a low level of response to a consultation, e.g. between 5%-50% of numbers responding to a parallel public organised anti-proposals petition, they dither between sitting on their results and spending a small fortune on publicity around their plans, including consecutive double page spreads in issues of the council tax funded Around Ealing magazine.
S Bradford ● 5174d