FACULTY OF BUSINESS AND LAW

Keep off the Grass: Stakeholder Consultation in Parks Services

Sidney Sullivan, Martha Mador, Kent Springdal, Jonathan Gander

Context and aimsThe Local Government Act 1999 (hereafter LGA) established a framework for planning, delivery and continuous improvement of local authority services to achieve ‘best value’. This marked a retreat from the Compulsory Competitive Tendering favoured by the preceding government. The overriding purpose of best value is to establish a culture of good management through a combination of economy, efficiency and effectiveness (LGA).

The LGA set a new requirement for the consultation and involvement of stakeholders in decision making. The LGA privileged stakeholder consultation as a duty of local authorities, requiring the results of consultation to influence strategic policy. This is the first time that stakeholder consultation had been enacted as a duty directed by legislation and subsequently audited, with the outcomes of the audit then being published to allow stakeholders to assess the extent of compliance. There were no provisions or redress for stakeholders within the LGA in the event that their preferences are ignored.

In the UK, local authorities manage or have responsibility for parks and green spaces. There are an estimated 27,000 parks in the United Kingdom (Cabe Space 2010), covering 140,000 hectares, or about 14% of the developed land mass of England. Estimated annual spend on these services is between £655m (Barber, 2005) and £692m (National Audit Office, 2006).

Despite the size of the activity, there is no accepted or consistently applied method for collecting data on spend or service provision (Barber, 2005). Cabe Space (2010) and the National Audit Office (2006) have commented on the fragmented nature of managerial responsibilities for the service, the paucity of data about the sector, the absence of budgetary information attributable to individual parks and the involvement and management of stakeholders.

Freeman (1984), Kaler (2002) and Phillips (2003) contend that not all stakeholders’ claims or requirements can be or should be treated equally or canvassed. They argue that policy makers must determine what it is they are consulting about, the stakeholders that they will consult and the salience that they will attribute to those stakeholders’ views. It is, in their view, inconceivable that a consensus will emerge; a choice between and weighting of the stakeholders’ views will be necessary. The LGA requires all stakeholders’ views to be canvassed, but provides no explanation of how to value the views of the “hard to reach”.

This study responds to the lack of information about the sector, examining how in fact the best value regime was implemented.

MethodsWhen the research was begun, the knowledge in the area of stakeholder consultation within parks and green spaces was very limited. This made rich case studies of a small sample of organisations an appropriate choice of research approach. As the overarching question was ‘How was the requirement to consult implemented?’, the relevant unit of analysis became organisations.

A sample of 3 Local Authorities were selected for study. Audit Commission reports were used to inform selection: one high, one mid-range, and one low-performing Local Authorities were chosen.

Several types and sources of data were accessed: organisational information in the public domain, for instance on websites and Audit Commission reports; policy and procedure documents within the organisations; reports from other third party organisations, like Greenspace and the Civic Trust (total 155 documents). Depth interviews lasting between 45 and 75 minutes each were conducted in each organisation including frontline officers, senior managers, and a small number of politicians and external stakeholders (15 per organisation, 45 in total). The main question related to the introduction and management of stakeholder consultations, and the main perspective sought was that of the organisations’ employees. Data was collected over several days at the host organization’s premises, in order to accommodate the work programmes and priorities of those organisations.

Interview transcripts and documentary evidence were encoded using thematic analysis to produce a rich picture of how implementation occurred. The analysis was reviewed after a two week break in order to bring refreshed eyes to the material. Each case was written up individually, and a cross-case analysis was also produced to draw together facts and themes. Thus the analysis triangulated between the various sources of information, and between the cases themselves in order to produce a more robust analysis.

Analysis and DiscussionOur research shows that each of the three organisations had a comprehensive normative consultation policy in place. These indicated who, how and when stakeholders should be consulted. However, the implementation of consultation diverged from the policies, and varied from organisation to organisation.

Organisation A was the most comprehensive in implementing its own policies. It had adopted a commercial consultation tool, which was however used on only the largest consultation projects. Organisation C had adopted consultation software, and employed consultation specialists to look after this important area. Some training in consultation was undertaken. However, the use of the software was sporadic and the data it generated was not widely shared; this was attributed to lack of expertise. Organisation B used neither specialist approaches nor consultation specialists. Nor did they train their own staff in consultation.

A significant difference between the three was the Head of Service’s oversight of implementation. In organisation A, management prioritised both implementing the consultation policy and ensuring that the agreed policy was quality assured by reports to SMT outlining the process and outcomes of the consultation. In the remaining two organisations there was no consistent formal or informal process of quality control or reporting of outcomes. Quality and reporting were generally reliant on the manager’s conscience and integrity to implement policy, with no obvious feed-back loop.

Analysis of the cohort’s archive data revealed examples of strategy and policy, single issues and complex multi layered issues, which they have consulted about and where policy changed. In these instances they have succeeded in resolving simple and sometimes complex matters of concern to stakeholders. However, policy arising from consulting with stakeholders is not commonplace.

Stakeholder views that are unambiguous, uncontroversial, or that do not significantly challenge the prevailing professional and social norms are most often incorporated into policy. In addition, stakeholder activism effectively silences the “hard to reach”. Ultimately, councillor power is decisive, mitigated by the strength and positioning of the stakeholders groups. The most common outcome shown by the empirical data from the case studies is of a process of short-term gains and pragmatism.Implications and ImpactThere is systematic inconsistency in implementation across all three organisations, but particularly in organisations B & C. The inconsistent enactment of the policy raises questions concerning the validity of their outcomes.

The view of council officers as non-partisan and disinterested actors is not supported by the empirical data from the case studies. They are, according to the interview data a partisan force and stakeholders in their own right.

This is a key finding and raises serious issues concerning the consistency of stakeholder consultation and the reliability and thoroughness of the outcomes.

Central to stakeholder consultation is the question of the role, expertise and decision making rights of politicians, the professional managers and the stakeholders consulted. The possibility that some members of stakeholder groups can exercise power over political representatives by wielding unelected but significant and unrepresentative views is an expressed concern in the case study data. In particular, that the power they have may be used to oppose democratically agreed council policies and to skew the results of stakeholder consultation processes.

Exacerbating this issue is the lack of training in stakeholder consultation provided by the cohort, especially organisations B & C. A great many of the interviewees said that they had not been trained to undertake stakeholder consultation and that their CPD scheme was not focussed on that requirement.

In this regard, stakeholder consultation in the cohort organisations has become a debate about quantities, the number of people consulted and the circumstances in which they are consulted. There is an urgent need for the debate to be extended to include the qualitative issues surrounding stakeholder consultation. This includes the issue of the representativeness of consultees when compared to the local demographic of the area. Greater attention is required to ensure that the “hard to reach” are included in the dialogue from which policies are evolved.