Case Study: Budget Consultation

Escalating annual payments. Pensioners' protests. Opposition policies to 'Axe the Tax'. Council tax is a political hot potato. The Government expects local councils to consult its residents and stakeholders when setting budgets, but how can this be done in a balanced and effective way when the issue is so emotive and yet largely misunderstood?

Background

It is one thing to consult residents on high salience issues, about which they will have a considered view. But residents generally claim to know very little about the complexities of councils' budgets; their concerns are with council tax levels and services, but not the linkages between them. The risk with budget consultation therefore is that it will engender unconsidered views, uninformed by the range of statutory obligations, demographic changes, social needs, financial management and other issues which councils need to consider.

Oxfordshire County Council and Ipsos MORI designed a form of deliberative research to meet four broad objectives:

• to inform senior County Council members and officers how residents prioritise and make their trade-offs when budget modelling;
• to identify priorities and views on council tax in the light of budget discussions;
• to engage a group of residents in the process which the Council undertakes when setting the budget;
• to demonstrate to residents that the Council wants to listen to their views.

Our Approach

This approach has been refined over the last five years and has been interpreted by a number of other councils.

The central concept of the research is to hold a deliberative discussion day to engage 'ordinary' residents in something akin to the process which the Council has to undertake when setting its budget. None will normally have participated in qualitative work before; they will not have been conditioned by previous consultations or engagement with the Council (e.g. as panel members). They are not, therefore, necessarily the same people as would normally contact their councillor, attend a public meeting, or participate in the Council's consultations.

Typically around thirty participants are methodically recruited as a broad cross section of local residents. They are first invited to articulate, unprompted, their views and concerns about living in Oxfordshire and the services provided by the Council. After being briefed by the Council on its priorities and budget issues, they are then set a budget modelling task to consider whether more or less money should be spent on a range of specific services or whether council tax should reduce or increase as a result. This 'trade off' discussion is informed by Council representatives, acting as expert witnesses about the detail of each service area.

The exercise is intended to find out what is important for residents, how this relates to their experience and attitudes, and how they trade off their priorities with the need to pay for the choices they make.

Outcomes

A number of important lessons typically emerge from these deliberative discussions:

• Participants feel that services should be protected wherever possible. Savings should be made where they can be, but generally only if there is no reduction in service provision;
• Participants do not wish to store up problems for the future and generally would invest now to save later, e.g., on pension funding and systems development;
• There are often a number of areas where participants would not be averse to additional expenditure but they typically want to see evidence of demand first, e.g. Libraries;
• Our current theme is the need for the Council to be more discriminatory in its funding and to consult local people about changes in local provision;
• Participants may well be supportive of specific proposals for additional expenditure in some areas where a clear case can be made, and where they consider that the need justifies the additional council tax implied.

Comments

"I now have a lot more confidence in the way the budget is handled" Participant

"Very enjoyable — showed us how difficult it must be for councillors to make these life-altering decision" Participant