Consultations
The council is committed to involving our citizens in the development of local services and policies to help us understand what is important to you and to develop solutions together.
We have recenlty launched our engage space, a tool to help Barnet Council and other local public services, such as Barnet Police, plan and publish consultations and engagement activities and also give citizens a central place to view how they can get involved.
You can use the engage space to find out about past, present and future consultations across Barnet. The space will also tell you how we have acted on the results of past consultations, so you can see how we have listened and what difference having your say has made.
Find out how you can get involved by visiting our engage space: http://engage.barnet.gov.uk
Why Barnet consults
Barnet Council consults in order to identify what to focus on and improve; develop a clear idea on what outcomes are desired and to understand what is important to residents. The council wishes to listen to, learn from and engage with, service users, local people, community partners and other stakeholders.
There are many benefits from consulting residents and other stakeholders:
- Determining how resources should be prioritised
- Better public services - consultation helps improve services by making them more relevant to people’s needs
- New services can be developed to meet the needs of current and future users.
- Informing service planning
- Testing ideas and policies before starting them on a large scale
- Improving relationships with residents and community groups
- Providing a way to monitor resident satisfaction levels over time
- Enabling residents to look at a problem from different perspectives
- To stimulate community involvement when bidding for external funding
- To promote the democratic process - people have a basic right to have control over their own lives
- Complying with a statutory duty to consult – for example, under the Government’s Best Value initiative the council has to consult the public about the services we provide.
How Barnet consults
The council consults residents using a variety of consultation channels and methods:
- Citizens’ Panel (including Black and Minority Ethnic Panel and Disability Panel);
- Residents’ Attitude Survey;
- Budget Consultation
- Area Forums;
- ‘One-off’ Consultation exercises on specific issues (e.g. Service consultations, Barnet’s Community Strategy, Children and Young People’s plan);
- Housing - a variety of mechanisms exist for encouraging tenant/leaseholder involvement and participation;
- Scrutiny Committees invite participation and call for evidence from the public and community representatives on particular issues;
- Ideas site
Email this pageLast modified by: Webmaster on 02/12/2011