Social Research ¦ Market Research ¦ Behavioural Insight ¦ Evaluation ¦ SROI
Social Research ¦ Market Research ¦ Behavioural Insight ¦ Evaluation ¦ SROI
Local government is operating in unprecedented times with the national and international economic situation having significantly changed since budgets were set last year. David Chong-Ping, Board Director and frontline researcher at M·E·L Research, explores what this means for councils and local authorities and their budget plans, as well as introducing a new approach to participatory budgeting.
“The fact the…budget has dropped in the last 10 years by 100 million and
Recent Participant
are still managing to function effectively is incredible…having the budget
cut by another 40 million at a time when demand for services such as
children and family services and adult social care are actually rising is going
to be a challenge to say the least. Some difficult and unpopular decisions
will no doubt have to be made with regards to cuts within departments.”
The Chancellor’s Autumn Statement has highlighted the challenges to public service finances, with over half of the £55bn of fiscal consolidation coming from public spending. While he announced priorities of stability, growth, and public services, the latter commitment was to “grow public spending, but more slowly”. The 2021 Spending Review commitments will be upheld for the next two years, including the Local Government Financial Settlement – but this is purely in the previously identified cash terms.
Local government is operating in unprecedented times with the national and international economic situation having significantly changed since budgets were set last year. This includes:
Rising energy costs, the cost of living crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic and responding to climate change are all taking their toll on stretched budgets and services, negatively impacting on council finances. Delivering a balanced budget in the current economic context will not be easy. It is a challenge which isn’t only facing household budgets, but also councils up and down the country.
With perhaps even greater intensity than ever, councils are having to weigh up the difficult choices of increasing council tax (now 3% without triggering a referendum, plus additional 2% SCP for those with social care responsibilities), raising additional revenue or using reserves, reducing or redesigning services, or cutting some services altogether.
In order to provide more comprehensive insight into service priorities and the trade-offs necessary within a restricted budget, residents require more information than it is possible to provide within a survey format and more interactive ways of working through their individual choices. We know that most residents do not really or fully understand how councils are funded nor the full range of services they provide – this is even more problematic in two-tier authorities, with very few residents understanding, or even caring, about who provides what. This requires the use of deliberative research.
We recommend an asynchronous online platform to undertake deliberative work across the space of approximately a week. This ensures that individual participants have extensive time to consider their views, as well as for councils to educate participants on the real situation so that participants can make an informed judgement.
Speaking about this more deliberative approach, David said:
The past decade has demonstrated the agility and resilience of local councils when facing difficult and changing circumstances. But we understand that the choices that councils face are become more challenging year on year. Bringing residents into the conversations in our view has both democratic benefits and leads to stronger decision making.
David Chong-Ping, Board Director
Our platform is fully mobile responsive, asynchronous (meaning participants can complete tasks at their own pace across the week) and is completely anonymous, including the use of pseudonyms if participants prefer.
Typically, over a week-long period we provide participants with the opportunity to absorb the necessary background and contextual information in their own time, then use the online community for both individual reflections and response, as well as group tasks, discussions or other interactions.
Each community is made up of a number of Activities, each of which is itself made up of interralted Tasks which follow on from one another. For instance, we might ask participants to review the range of services a council provides, tell us which they did and didn’t know about and which Tier of government they think deliver which, before moving on to a second task which asks them to allocate points to each from a pre-defined budget. The final task for that day might ask them to discuss how they made their decisions about priorities via a video.
We can use a wide range of tasks to help elicit responses from participants that are considered and in-depth, as well as more top-of-mind feedback. These can include:
If you are interested in finding out more abour our budget consulation approach more generally or specifically about our deliberative platform and approach, please speak with David Chong-Ping directly or get in touch with the team.
