The aim is to stop doing perfunctory, box ticking consultations, and instead for Ministers to come to a decision in a way that involves a diverse range of affected people to shape the policy outcome - described as participatory policy making! 

This is something that we have been advocating for. To move the investment (and the duty)  from consultation on decisions that have already been made, to meaningful conversations on questions that matter to residents, patients, those with lived experience and the people who are left out of the system. 

This looks like people in Derry and Strabane shaping their climate strategy; Maidstone residents making recommendations to their Council to prevent violence against women and girls; the community in and around the Cairngorms National Park shaping how a climate fund will be spent in their local area; or people in Blaenau Gwent working with the Council on how their public transport system should work. 

All these produced better policy because the people living with a problem hold knowledge of what works. Participation surfaces tensions, trade offs and specific points of failure early, when it is cheap to act on, rather than late, when it arrives as a judicial review or a failing programme (we have a few examples of that in our cost of not engaging report.

It is exciting to see the Cabinet Office ask for a better way. But there is a clear balance that needs to be struck. If consultations are seen to slow things down, it is not going to be okay for departments to simply remove any engagement with organisations and individuals who have expertise, and for that to be replaced with an occasional piece of participatory decision making. Unlike Scotland, this is not a duty to consult. A strategic approach is needed. One where consultations that apply the Gunning principles (consult when proposals are at a formative stage, give enough information and enough time, and take the responses conscientiously into account) are still applied; and for issues and policies that are high stakes, participation and deliberation used to find solutions with those who are most affected. 

So what does the shift that we need look like for policy makers?

At Involve we have been working on participatory and deliberative approaches for over 20 years. We have seen how participation can unlock stuck issues like assisted dying in Jersey or create new strategies for engaging audiences at the National Gallery. We have also seen these approaches deployed when there was not a real decision to be made, or on an issue where most people agreed. This is less useful. Based on what we have learned, this transformation to participatory policy making needs to attend to seven key steps: 

1. Set a strategy. Know what you want to engage on and why, and plan your resources accordingly. You might take the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) framework as a starting point. It sets out five levels of participation - inform, consult, involve, collaborate and empower. Each has a different promise to the public - consult promises to keep the public informed, to listen and feedback on how views have been used, whereas involve and collaborate promise to ensure that views are reflected in a decision or policy to varying degrees. The strategy should set out when a decision needs in depth input, at what stage and when it is okay to consult or inform. We are currently working with the South Yorkshire Combined Mayoral Authority on their strategic approach to participation and have helped a range of public sector bodies to guide their approaches to engagement. 
2. Use participation early and proportionately. If you involve people in agenda setting and tackling trade offs up front, you will be in a better place to design the detail. At the same time, you need to invest in deeper participation on the questions that warrant it. We have identified 3 Cs of deliberation. If a decision is complex, contested and consequential (it is still an open decision that matters to the relevant community) then a deeper deliberative process such as a citizens assembly or jury will pay off. This is being applied in the West Midlands on the Spatial Development Strategy (SDS) which defines future planning for the region. The Residents Assembly is focused on housing and the greenbelt as issues that are undecided, impactful, complex and contested within the SDS. 
3. Choose a method that fits the scale of the challenge. There are a range of methods that you can use across a policy or project cycle. Not every participatory process is a citizens assembly - but they are useful for a contested values question such as the triple lock, assisted dying, reopening Brexit; and immigration. A service design problem suits co-design workshops with users and frontline staff. A long term standing panel allows you to grow the conversation alongside a policy. A technical question with many affected parties, but relatively limited options, might suit an open deliberative process online. At Involve we have a table of methods that sets out the different approaches you can use, when (you can see a version of it in the DESNZ guidance for local authorities’, Stronger Together). 
4. Find ways to scale. Scale is not just about getting more people in the room, it is how a process works and dovetails with other things that are happening. Simple routes to scale could include supporting voluntary organisations and communities to have conversations about the questions you are asking (paid of course); surveys or doorknocking to understand people’s concerns in advance of a process; community conversations where people are trained to engage their communities and share the results. The Food and Farming Commission created a set of workshop materials to allow different communities to feed into their deliberations on the future of food; In Blackpool, Involve trained ‘conversation starters’ to talk to their friends and neighbours before they formed a panel that ensured that marginalised communities fed into their climate strategy. Increasingly, technology is supporting scale through online deliberation as part of a process. Camden Council is designing a wealth fund that will be distributed to local businesses, for example. They have done broad engagement online reaching 1000 people, then brought together a panel of 50 people to process their thoughts and ideas to create an investment strategy and support the investment decisions that are further tested with the group of 1000. This is a great way to combine going broad and deep in an integrated way. 
5. When you are delivering a participatory approach, pay attention to standards of good practice. Involve has a draft set of standards that are important in any deliberative process. These include clarity of purpose, making space for follow up and putting equity and inclusion at the heart of your approach. Tell people at the outset what is open to change and what is not. If it is a piece of policy then ministers will make the final decision, so say clearly which parts of the decision participants can shape. Nothing erodes trust faster than inviting people to a conversation that turns out to have been decided already. Then make a commitment to sharing what happens and doing things differently. A "you said, we will" style statement is a minimum, but you also need to allow time and resources for follow up. In terms of equity and inclusion, one of the big challenges of consultation is that it doesn’t reach the majority of people, especially those that are most affected, or least likely to have power over a decision. Participatory processes enable you to recruit a reflective sample of people, paid for their time, and to target recruitment at specific demographics, experiences or attitudes. This is the start. Centring equity, accessibility and inclusion in participant support, design, facilitation and logistics leads to better outcomes. 
6. Build capacity and culture in your teams. This is a marathon and not a sprint. For a serious shift towards participatory policy making you need teams who are able to commission, co-design and facilitate a range of conversations. There are times that you will need external expertise such as Involve - when you are doing your early processes and/or dealing with a ‘high C’ deliberation. There are also times when you and your team can take the lead. Plan to build capacity in a sustained way.
7. Connect to the wider system, including supporting the power that already exists. We know that policy making does not happen in isolation. Any strategy needs to respond to what else is happening and connect to different departments. It may be that there has already been some in depth participation on the issue you are working on at a local level, perhaps by a local authority, or a civil society actor. Communities themselves are generally working in a more connected way. Think about how this work can support or build community power. True participatory policy making will see different departments and levels of government playing their roles proportionately and in a joined up way. Involve has some ideas on a blueprint to set that out. 

As policy makers, this is a fantastic opportunity to sit down with the people that your policy would affect. You can understand what was really going wrong, listen to answers you did not expect, and test ideas with the people who would live with them. 

The civil service exists to serve the public. Participation is how we make sure we are serving them as they are, not as we imagine them to be. It needs each of you to make a start. That might be a participation strategy or a more open door/ different conversation on a policy you are working on right now.