The True Costs of Public Participation
The first stage of Involve's pioneering research into the costs and benefits of participation concluded in spring 2006.
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We'd love to know what you think of our work so far. If you have any comments, please contact Edward Andersson on 020 7632 0122.
The project
There is a gap between the rhetoric underpinning public participation and the hard evidence of the financial costs of undertaking such working. This gap creates problems, both in terms of planning and also in terms of making the case for participation.
A central finding of our work around public participation so far is the lack of hard evidence about the financial costs and benefits of participative projects. In particular, the 'true' value of participation if often claimed to come through its intangible products, such as improved relationships and ownership, which are hard to quantify.
We have also found that the dominant reason for not embarking upon a participative approach is that it claimed to be too expensive, but financial evidence is never more than anecdotal. At present budgets to support participation and consultation are often inadequately based upon a mixture of historical costs and gut feeling.
This research strand aims to create more effective participatory practice through increased understanding of the financial costs and benefits of undertaking specific public participation work.
Defining the benefits of participation requires a very different method to any of the classic cost-benefit approaches, the focus being on identifying where costs may have arisen, and how to assess the value of often intangible benefits. In particular we would seek to identify new data on the actual costs and benefits / value from a range of participatory processes, including:
- placing a value on: direct costs (e.g. venues, publicity, expert input, staff etc.)
- indirect costs (e.g. internal staff time, changing internal systems and identifying new work);
- identifying the costs saved as a result of a participatory process;
- assessing the value of the benefits of participation;
- costs of different parts of the process;
- financial costs (loss of income, child minders etc.) of those participating;
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.