How do we keep local government reorganisation local?

As councils up and down England work hard to collaborate and navigate the challenge and opportunity that is local government reorganisation, many are battling with not only ensuring strong, reliable, and meaningful engagement is happening now to inform their final proposals to government, but also how this will work in future.

For many councils, unitary government feels further away from the residents and communities they serve, while for larger authorities, a keen awareness of the need to demonstrate understanding of local identities may be prevalent. It’s a tough balance to achieve and everyone has a view about what is ‘right’ and what is not.

Of course, one of the best ways to determine how engagement in a new council will be established, is to start with the very people you want to engage; your local stakeholders and residents. Most councils have completed extensive stakeholder mapping to support LGR already. This will be invaluable as you move to creating your new council in future. It won’t be the be all and end all, but it’s a great starting point.

Some advice I can offer is to think about the engagement triangle below. There are lots of versions of these, and I’ve tailored this one to work specifically for local government comms colleagues as they plan their LGR engagement as well as their future engagement.

At the bottom of the triangle is communicating and informing. This is the basis of all engagement. Making sure your messaging is clear, relevant, accurate and accessible is important in helping your audience to understand what’s going on and to form a view. 

This understanding is crucial because it empowers individuals to move beyond simply receiving information and actively participate in a meaningful way. When people grasp the full context, they can then critically evaluate the information presented, weigh different perspectives, and ultimately develop their own informed opinions. Without this foundational understanding, engagement can become superficial and won’t provide genuine insight.

The next stage is asking and listening. Seeking ideas and feedback to inform decisions or service developments is crucial to creating a community that revolves around services that your audience actually wants. 

This links back to Orlo’s trust pyramid – in particular the ‘listening’ element. It’s important to make an effort to deeply understand your communities by hearing their thoughts, feelings, and everyday frustrations. How can you effectively set meaningful organisational objectives without genuinely understanding the people you serve? There are tools  that can help with this to ensure you’re really hearing your audience.

The next layer is consulting and acting. Formal consultations that will directly influence decisions and specific services and policy proposals. For this to be truly effective, it’s important for these consultations to move beyond a ‘tick box’ exercise. 

Decision makers must be prepared to genuinely listen, and adapt and even significantly alter their plans based on the consultation outcomes. It’s also important to provide clear feedback on how the input was considered and how it will be acted on. This demonstrates accountability and builds trust for future engagement.

At the very top of the engagement triangle is co-creating. Once you’ve communicated, informed, asked, listened, consulted and acted, you’ll eventually end up in a place where you’re deciding together with your communities about services, policies and other plans that affect those local people.

This highest level of engagement is a different way of looking at a traditionally top down approach to a truly collaborative partnership. Co-creation isn’t just about gathering feedback, it’s about shared ownership and joint responsibility. It means moving beyond just responding to proposals and instead, developing solutions alongside the people who will be impacted.

For me, it works across multiple platforms and for various audiences and groups. Take a look at your stakeholder data and consider how this engagement triangle might work for different groups, at different times, on different topics? How can it be applied when shaping the new council’s engagement policies and practice, so you’re helping to keep local government local.

It’s pretty self-explanatory, but I like it because it places good, clear, relevant and accurate comms, tailored to the audience as the basis for all engagement. It doesn’t define how engagement should take place at any level, so there is loads of scope for creativity of strategy, messaging, channels, content and methods and delivery.

So if you’re asked for input into engagement for your council, either now to inform LGR or in the future to help shape your new council’s own methods, I hope this gives you a useful starting point. Let me know how you get on!