Chapter 2 – Citizen & community engagement

2.1 Citizen engagement – purpose and different approaches

Toolkit chapters

2.1 Citizen engagement – purpose and different approaches

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Different approaches to citizen engagement

Councils can engage their citizens on climate change in different ways beyond statutory obligations such as planning consultations.

  • ‘Top-down’ approaches consist of measures in which community engagement is directly orchestrated by councils and policymakers, such as a Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change or a Climate Change Citizens’ Jury. These engagement sessions offer the key advantage of allowing authorities to observe and understand public opinion on climate change. Councils can pose specific policy questions or trade-offs they are facing to better understand their community’s views on these questions.
  • ‘Bottom-up’ approaches offer local authorities the opportunity to harness the energy of successful community-led projects. Some of these projects will be directly tackling the climate emergency; others may be targeting related areas of concern such as making streets safer and cleaner. Successful community initiatives build trust, deliver wider benefits and increase the capacity of stretched local authority teams.

In addition, public engagement allows citizens to raise concerns over new climate strategies, such as restrictions on private car use or closure of streets near schools at the start/end of the school day. By carrying out public engagement, councils can understand the different perspectives and drivers across the diversity of residents in their communities to produce more informed policy decisions. During these processes, councils can demonstrate possible co-benefits – e.g. whether it be safer places for families to walk and play, cleaner air or warmer homes. These things combined enable councils to reduce resistance to new environmental policies which will help meet ambitious climate targets.

It’s essential for any public engagement to have a really clear purpose. To help identify this purpose, key questions to consider include:

  • What do you want to know from the public (for example, about their preferences, experiences, aspirations or ideas)?
    • If you could summarise this as a single question, what would that question be?
    • Underneath this question, what sub-questions do you want to explore?
  • Is there anything else you want to achieve from the engagement (for example, building mutual understanding between different groups)?
  • What should the engagement process produce (for example, a report, photos, videos or something else)?

Citizens assemblies

A citizens’ assembly is just one public engagement method that has been used to consider climate questions. A citizens’ assembly is a group of people who are brought together to discuss one or more issues and reach a conclusion about what they think should happen. The people who take part are chosen so they reflect the wider population in terms of demographics (e.g. age, gender, ethnicity, social class) and sometimes relevant attitudes (e.g. preferences for a small or large state). They typically comprise 50-160 people.

Citizens’ assemblies give members of the public the time and opportunity to learn about and discuss a topic, before reaching conclusions. Assembly members are asked to make trade-offs and arrive at workable recommendations.

Late in 2019, a UK-wide citizens’ assembly on climate change was launched, bringing together people from all walks of life and opinion to discuss how the UK should meet its climate change target. ‘Climate Assembly UK’ had over 100 members, who together are representative of the UK population. These assembly members come from 30,000 households randomly selected from across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The assembly members met in person over three weekends in Spring 2020 and completed their work in May 2020 following a series of three more online sessions during the pandemic. They heard balanced evidence on the choices the UK faces, discussed them, and made recommendations about what the UK should do to become net zero by 2050.

Over 25 local authorities have now conducted citizens’ assemblies to drive climate action, including Blaenau Gwent, Cambridge and Oxford. According to public participation charity Involve, which facilitated the UK wide Climate Assembly and also helped to facilitate Camden’s Climate Change Citizens Assembly, key requirements for delivering an effective assembly are ensuring a good range of expertise plus sufficient time and space for assembly members to reflect and reach recommendations.

Sarah Allan, Head of Engagement at Involve also shares the following advice in a paper commissioned by the Institute for Government:

“Whether it is discussing the direction or design of a policy, public engagement needs to feed into decision making. It should be clear in advance who will receive the results, that they are committed to reviewing them seriously, and that the results will be ready in time for them to be useful. It should also be agreed who will respond to participants about which of their ideas are being taken forward and how participants will be kept informed of developments.”

Involve runs a live tracker of citizens assemblies on their website: https://www.involve.org.uk/citizens-assembly-tracker.

Citizens’ juries

Citizens’ juries (typically 12-25 participants) are another similar, but smaller (and therefore cheaper) approach which may be more manageable for some councils. Twelve or more members of the general public (the ‘jurors’) participate in a process of dialogue under the guidance of a ‘lead facilitator’. They interrogate specialist commentators (sometimes called witnesses) chosen because of their knowledge, insight and/or lived experience of a particular subject. Unlike legal juries, it is an issue, rather than an individual, that is ‘on trial’. Jurors then draw up and publish their conclusions with a few jurors possibly acting as advocates on behalf of the whole jury. Participants are selected to reflect the community and act as independent citizens rather than experts or representatives. A charge or research question(s) is decided by organisers often informed by an overarching advisory group. The jurors deliberate based on their views and the evidence provided by expert witnesses and come to a final conclusion on the Jury question.

Local authorities can learn from the experience of trail-blazing councils. Shared Future, which facilitated the Leeds Climate Change Citizens Jury, has the following tips for running a citizens’ jury or assembly:

  • Participants should be randomly selected: This is usually stratified, meaning the population is divided into a number of separate social groups (reflecting the diversity of the local population) and a random sample is then drawn from each group using the electoral roll, knocking door to door etc. They aim to be demographically diverse.
  • Ask the right questions and allow sufficient time: questions should be carefully worded, easy to understand and broad enough to empower participants to think creatively, such as ‘how should Burnley respond to climate change?’. Each jury should have at least 20 hours to explore the issue and appropriate questions before arriving at a consensus.
  • Offer incentives: To show their commitment is valued, participants should be paid to attend.

Online consultation

Another option for engaging citizens is to run online consultations. Digital platforms can make it easy and cost effective for councils to consult their residents on a wide range of issues, including climate change. However, care must be taken so that anyone who may lack digital literacy is not excluded from such a process, e.g. by providing an option for people to provide their views via post or in person through drop-in sessions or workshops.

There are also many other engagement methods that can be used. Involve have a detailed list on their website. Involve would still emphasise that the most important first step before choosing the method is to have real clarity on the purpose of the engagement and then choose the method which will help you achieve that purpose.

Case Study: Blaenau Gwent Citizens Assembly

Engaging the community in climate action decisions.

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