Maintaining regulatory compliance in statutory consultations has traditionally required a great deal of effort on the part of those running them. Best practice and meeting the Gunning Principles alone are rarely enough to meet sometimes stringent statutory requirements.
Simply meeting statutory obligations has sometimes been seen as both a floor and a ceiling by facilitators, due to restricted resources and budgets. However, now GovTech tools like Citizen Space are making it easier to run efficient, compliant consultations.
Reducing the resource burden of regulation
Historically, public bodies and governmental organisations have had to sink a significant level of resources into delivering statutory consultations.
All consultations, whether for a small planning request or a major national infrastructure consultation involve a similar set of administrative tasks. Facilitators must:
- Publish information in an accessible format.
- Provide a way for participants to respond with their view on a given proposal.
- Analyse this data, looking for common themes and trends.
- Use this information to inform decision-making.
- Feedback to participants (and sometimes the general public) how the data was used.
Each of these processes are essential, and in many cases are a statutory requirement. However, traditionally they have also been very labour-intensive. In large consultations, hundreds of hours of work would go into completing administrative tasks alone.
Preparing documents, collating and analysing responses, and delivering feedback would often take a long time. It would therefore usually cost quite a bit to run a consultation. When governments or organisations had to run frequent consultations, these statutory obligations quickly add up.
This could sometimes lead to a culture of the bare minimum. If budgets and time constraints make meeting minimum standards a struggle, there is little call to go above and beyond. Many engagement activities outside of standard consultations were therefore sidelined. More ambitious citizen engagement activities, like participatory budgeting, would be seen as more demands on limited resources.
Digital engagement tools for statutory consultations
In the last decade, there has been a significant shift in the way statutory consultations are conducted. For an increasing number of those facilitating consultations, excessive paperwork and countless hours of manual data input is a thing of the past. Instead, GovTech tools have allowed statutory consultations to move into the 21st century.
These digital tools allow participants to take part from the comfort of their own home, using a purpose-built engagement platform. Using a digital engagement platform allows facilitators to upload large files, give detailed contextual information, and even adapt the consultation questions over time where specific issues are raised.
The work associated with analysing data has also been simplified. Inbuilt analysis tools can instantly flag trends and patterns that would otherwise have taken weeks to input and analyse.
However, as technology has developed, public expectations have only grown. Beyond simply meeting standards, governments and public bodies are expected to demonstrate that consultations are meaningful, inclusive, and evidence-driven. Failure to do so can undermine public trust, delay implementation, or result in legal challenges from the public.
The possibility of challenge makes it particularly important to ensure that all statutory requirements have been met to the letter. Otherwise, the risk is that the result of a consultation could be overturned due to a technicality. Even in the best case scenario, this would mean repeating the consultation unnecessarily.
Mapping regulatory compliance within consultations
The best starting point for any consultation is to produce a clear engagement plan. For a statutory consultation, that also means creating a plan for how to meet regulatory standards at each stage of the process.
It can be helpful for those planning a consultation to map regulatory requirements for each part of the consultation. For example, identifying early on who the statutory consultees are, and how long the consultation must run for.
Other obligations may include meeting current accessibility standards, using data in a way that is compliant with GDPR and FOI requirements, and various other legal requirements around how evidence is gathered, stored and used. It is important to note that there is no single legislation governing the statutory consultation process in many countries, including the UK. Instead, the relevant legislation is often sector specific. There is no one-size-fits-all approach.
Generally speaking however, all statutory consultations will have requirements around:
- How data is gathered, such as submission handling.
- How data is handled, such as how long it can be stored for and how and when responses must be anonymised.
- How feedback is used. For example, there should be clear examples of how consultation input has informed the process. It should never be the case that consultations are simple tick-box activities to a pre-determined outcome, and this should be clear in the workflow.
- Various other accountability exercises, like dual sign-offs on decision-making and trails for audits.
By considering each of these within a sector specific context, it is possible to map out exactly what is required to meet statutory requirements at each step.
Ensuring key compliance principles
Digital engagement platforms like Citizen Space help to ensure statutory compliance by embedding regulatory principles as standard. A purpose-built consultation platform makes building a legally compliant consultation format simpler. Examples of how these platforms build-in compliance include:
Accessibility
A consultation being accessible to all potential consultees, regardless of differing physical abilities is common to all statutory consultation requirements. By using a purpose-built platform, facilitators know that they are meeting the latest WCAG standards while maintaining a user-friendly experience.
Data integrity
Data integrity is vital to the success of any consultation. By creating a standardised, repeatable and amendable submission format, the quality of data received by the consultation can be easily maintained. Where traditional consultation methods may not be able to flag and amend an error until long after the consultation has closed, digital consultations ensure any errors can be fixed quickly and easily.
Once data has been received, there are also a great deal of legal requirements around how it is stored and used. Privacy requirements, including GDPR, are supported through clear user consent and robust cyber security. These tools make it easier to manage sensitive information in a safe and transparent way.
Standardising regulatory compliance in consultation
Every consultation is unique, and exists within a specific context that depends on sector, scale, and local context. However, many of the regulatory steps involved in a consultation are routine. Particularly when they are being facilitated by the same body.
Standardising the steps involved in setting up a consultation can help facilitators to maintain consistency across multiple consultations that may be taking place over multiple years. It also reduces risk, as the more than can be duplicated from a previously compliant consultation, the less there is to go wrong.
Digital platforms like Citizen Space can even reduce the difficulty and risk associated with an initial consultation. Using consultation templates, the platform provides pre-set formats for things like accessibility statements and privacy information. The templates can also provide a prepared set of question types and feedback summaries.
Pre-built workflows can be used to reduce the risk of errors. This makes it easier to demonstrate compliance during audits or internal reviews. Common elements built into these workflows may include:
- Required accessibility standard checks.
- Approval and sign-off requirements before publication.
- Standardised reporting formats for feedback summaries.
If an organisation is running just one, small-scale consultation at a time then it is easy to see issues as they come up. However, if an organisation is running a large-scale consultation, or multiple different consultations, centralised management becomes important.
By managing consultations from one central system, facilitators can view all live, planned and closed consultations in one place. This lets them monitor progress, flag issues as they arise and look for any gaps in feedback.
Standardisation can significantly decrease the workload for consultation facilitators. Like digital platforms as a whole, a standardised practice can remove a great deal of redundant and repetitive work.
Case study: Sustainable travel in Sutton
The London Borough of Sutton is a well connected urban hub, with over nine train stations and a large number of frequent bus routes. Their local council has a long history of pioneering travel that is both sustainable and encourages citizens to get active.
For over a decade, Sutton has been using Citizen Space to engage citizens on their active travel and transport plans. In 2021, they needed to conduct a consultation as part of a statutory requirement to consult on their draft Sustainable Transport Strategy for the whole borough. They chose Citizen Space. They were able to add all required documents, formal consultation notices and explanatory contextual information to the platform. As a result, they were able to conduct the consultation with citizens across the entire borough.
Their transport consultation was so successful, that they have gone on to run several other transport consultations on the platform since. This includes using Citizen Space Geospatial to conduct a consultation on the use of Electric Vehicle (EV) charging stations.
“We chose Citizen Space because it met the authorityʼs specific needs at the best value.”
Ben Unsworth, Head of Engagement and Equalities, London Borough of Sutton
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 support regulatory compliance in statutory consultations, book a free demo today.
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