Codesign policy at every level
Last Updated on August 22, 2024
Seek out the groups targeted by a particular policy. Create formal and informal means of public participation from the beginning, and make sure the public is involved in each step of the process. Include measures which address the concerns of those adversely affected. Ensure the highest level of transparency throughout the process.
Collaboration and engagement – 88%
Single tier average 53%
Brighton and Hove Council got a star rating of 88%. It scored well on things like supporting behaviour change that residents can take; a climate action plan with SMART targets including an easy-to-read climate action plan; working with external partners and sharing best practice.
However, as with some other questions, some of the scoring is difficult to understand. For example it got a full score of 1.0/1 on lobbying the government for climate action without any evidence to support this score (‘no evidence available’ see question 6.3)
The question for which it got a zero mark was:-
Has the council passed a motion to ban high carbon advertising and sponsorship?
This question was weighted ‘high’
Score: 0/1
Criteria: A point will be awarded if the council has passed a motion to ban high carbon advertising on ad sites it controls by introducing a low carbon advertising and sponsorship policy or similar, or updated their existing advertising and sponsorship policies to include high carbon products
Evidence: no evidence available
Only 3 out of 186 tier councils got a full score for this question, one of which is Coventry Council.
Coventry Council ‘Advertising and Sponsorship policy’ sets out key principles which include the following:
The industry categories that are not acceptable for entering into a sponsorship or advertising agreement include:
- Tobacco/cigarettes
- Gambling
- Adult-oriented products/services
- Armaments
- Petrochemical Industry
- Payday Loans
Collaboration and engagement – next steps
Brighton and Hove’s score is to be commended but the marking framework used by Climate Scorecards is narrow and based on a limited standard of community engagement.
As with many councils Brighton and Hove needs to move beyond ‘consultation’ to ‘co-design’; from ‘doing to’ to ‘doing with’. At present most councils are locked into a ‘Decide-Announce-Defend’ approach or DAD. Co-design is more about EDD – Engage-Deliberate-Decide. A useful comparison between these two approaches is set out in this blog by Penny Walker who specialises in sustainable development.
Such a co-design approach needs to be embedded from the inception of a project or policy proposal, with members of the public – or a specific group targeted by a proposed policy – pulled into to actively co-operate in its design. This is about nurturing a participatory democratic culture that enables people and communities to have an active say in shaping their own future.
To give more concrete examples of how this might play out:
Citizens panels and assemblies: the council could build on its good work in the Brighton and Hove Climate Assembly which it convened in the autumn of 2020. However, rather than a one-off climate assembly which requires very expensive outside input from organisations like Ipsos Mori, the council could commission organisations such as Involve to deliver workshops to train elected councillors and council officers to design and run their own citizens panels (12- 20 people) and citizens assemblies (40 members upwards) without the need to buy in expensive outside experts.
This would include applying ‘stratified random sortition’ tools to ensure that citizens panels and assemblies were a genuinely representative sample of a target population (a school, a neighbourhood, a city or a country). Ideally, the training workshops would be open to VCSE organisations who could run their own ‘citizen panels’.
(Declaration of interest: I am a member of the Steering Group for Democracy Network, one of whose members is Involve)
Proposal for a City Wide Partnership to push forward net zero pg 5 of the 2030 Carbon Neutral Programme (2021-22 annual report) stresses the need for “collaboration with businesses, institutions, and communities is essential to reach our carbon neutral target. The council with community partners will explore options for a city climate action partnership to build and coordinate a collaborative city-wide response…”
The intention is laudable but it is not clear anything concrete has happened. Recent conversations I have had with others suggest that such an interagency partnership is sorely needed but has stalled as a result of disagreements about approach.