Out of interest, what got you involved?
I live in Northants - our team is trying to maintain a service that NCC has a legal duty to provide but doesn't want to because of finances.
and are you dealing with a NALC authority or an LGA authority?
We deal a lot with our town council (NALC), a bit with our district council and MPs and a lot with NCC. (LGA)
What do you think councils should do to reach out?
Everything has to start from the basic assumption that your electorate does not already know how procedures work, but that if they did they might want to get involved.
There is no one way for them to get involved, you have to offer as many different kinds of engagement as possible, and be as responsive as possible in those media. Sound bites suck, no one wants those. Engagements should be as unique as possible too.
For example, one thing that has struck me is that it would be good if the public could comment in the middle of Council meetings - ie structure: public speak, relevant committe/cabinet speak, opposition speak, public speak again - vote. This places the public in the role of more equal representatives and gives them a chance to reply. It's pretty frustrating if you are sat in the docks and a cllr says something false or misleading, and your only hope is that another cllr spots it and calls them out. The current set up positions the public as junior in their knowledge at all times to Cllrs, which can be ridiculous as cllrs can't be experts in everything and if there are people in the gallery it's not unusual for at least one of them to know the topic in intense detail or who has worked the job they're talking about for 40 years...
Being accessible is not just about sticking public meetings on a calendar you have to be savvy with the website to find. Say an LGA does a consultation about something - there will then be meetings about that thing for the LGA to deliberate and decide. Depending on the set up there may be a cabinet that makes the decision then passes it on to the whole council to vote or a committee that makes the recommendation. That is a lot of information that a lay person won't know to look for or realise they can be involved with.
In my experience although the financially documents are all on NCC's website, they are not very well organised and are hard to search through. Most reports also are not written in plain language. It's okay for them to have certain level of technical detail but in general this kind of thing has to stop.
When/where these meetings will be and the significance of each one needs to be ON THE SAME PAGE as the information about the consultation. So that people know, in advance, which meeting they need to go to and when they need to speak, they also need to be able to easily see if they have to register in advance any rules etc.
Long term engagement often starts with a single issue, it's really important to get how it's consulted on right if you want it to lead not just to a consultation with the masses but future engagement from an informed public.
how do we engage people to take even the initial steps ?
With tiny steps.
Ask them to send an email about one bipartisan issue (if engagement is your main aim it must always be bipartisan, even if you work for labour/tories that can't be your angle. It has to be everyone's voices are welcome) then later, can you come to X meeting. Celebrate small milestones of engagement. Remind councillors not be arsey if the public turning up for the first time make protocol mistakes. Get councillors to chat to the public after the meeting and invite them back.
Only ever ask one or two things at time. People have time for one or two small things a week. They don't have time if you present it as a year long committment or whatever... In a years time, if they feel they are being heard, the amount of time they are prepared to give to engagement will go up. They will tell others it's worth going.
how should the websites change to make them work for real people?
I've spoken a bit about this above: Basically every kind of engagement the public can make about whatever issue should be in ONE PLACE on the website. That one place needs to be short, to the point and written in plain English (readable to an eleven year old)
So if a person is unhappy with the school system say they should be able to see, how to email a complaint, the council education twitter page, the current consultation and upcoming public meetings about education.
Having done that with the website, you can not assume that people will access the website. If engagement is important, you have to go our there and talk to people about it. Town hall debates and Q&As are really important and we should have more of them. Having them before elections would be amazing.
We met our MP in a local Tesco once. This is kind of weird if you want to talk about something personal, but it's good if you just want to be saying 'hi, we're here, you can talk to us.' Or if a group of residents have a bee in their bonnet you can advise them to turn up en masse.
Consultations about LG issues need to be short and precise. They should not be written to engineer one answer or another. I know this sounds like my optimistic side talking - but actually it's really important. If people start reading a twenty page consultation about the bus say - and are confused or can't see any answers that fit what they want to say they can worry about saying the wrong thing and decide to say nothing. They know they are being manipulated and it makes them feel angry and upset but also less likely to engage because they know the 'wrong' answer could be manipulated. We came across this all the time.
should they use social media?
Yes. Definitely.
There's two sides to this - obviously our work is bipartisan, single issue so although we engage with local governement a lot, we also utilised it as a tool to help people understand what the LG was doing and how they could respond. We used it to build and amplify voices and reach people that won't see a consultation listed on a website or in a town hall. Guides about how to fill in consultations were really valued. We've used facebook live and twitter to do these before. Literally someone talking through every single question on the form, while residents asked questions about what different parts of the form meant. When we did this last I remember a lot of discussion about the word 'mitigate' for example, plain language is really important. All initials have to be explained too.
Social media presence is important and most places have this now. But you have to hit all demographics meaningfully, not just with PR, otherwise one demographic or another isn't getting any news about things they can take part in, just press releases. That's not engagement, unless you are asking from feedback from the public then there is no engagement.
Councillors individually having a social media presence is good, it's a way for people to talk. They should have training about what to do if people are rude before they start though.
Something that I think works quite well is when councillors get involved in individual campaign's about their special interest online. People might not follow a councillor, or a town council page, but they might follow a twitter account about bike lanes that happens to be run by a councillor. The councillor can make sure people know how they can engage with the LG system as well as doing more usual social media campaign tactics.
The problem with councillor pages that put some people off is that there are whips involved. There is political pressure to always be regurgitating whatever their whip says. People who aren't already knee deep in a party hate that.
Online and face to face engagement means taking the feedback face-to-face which is hard. Having councillors who can resist the urge to be defensive is really important and really builds on the process. You can see the difference in followers and interaction numbers. Building up a good relationship can be quite quick if you put them time into it. It's about being transparent and honest and passing on information as soon as you can.
should they do paper newsletters ?
Quarterly newsletters or whatever other postal publications should never be just a propaganda exercise (most of them are in my experience) again, they should have pages on each element of running the county that is up being decided on at that time, with the webpage, email address, postal address and any key dates that people need to know. Older people are really unlikely to go on a website but they will probably read a magazine, so yes I do think they are important, plus they can spread news around small towns faster than the internet sometimes...