South Ayrshire Council News

South Ayrshire Council is to adopt the National Standards for Community Engagement, published by Communities Scotland, as their standards for community engagement for all work carried out by and on behalf of the Council.

Earlier this year a group of senior Officers from the Council’s Corporate Management Team formed the Council’s Public Consultation Officers Network. These Officers have responsibility for ensuring the integrity of consultation exercises conducted by the Council, and for developing ways of improving the reporting of key results from public consultation.

As part of their duties the group is responsible for adopting appropriate standards and protocols for community engagement. 

Members of the Council’s Leadership Panel have approved a recommendation by the Group that the Council should adopt National Standards for Communities engagement, as recommended by Communities Scotland. These standards cover ten issues relating to:

Involvement – a commitment to ensure that all stakeholders are engaged in any consultation exercise.

Support - a commitment to identify and overcome any barriers to the public being consulted/engaged.

Planning of the engagement – a commitment to ensure that community consultations are properly planned and unnecessary duplication is avoided.

Method of engagement – a commitment to ensure that the method of consultation is fit for purpose.

Commitment to working together – a commitment to agree and use clear procedures that enable participants to work with one another effectively and efficiently

Sharing information – a commitment to ensure that any necessary information is communicated between participants.

Working with other – a commitment to work effectively with others with an interest in engagement.

Improvement – a commitment to develop actively the skills, knowledge and confidence of all participants

Providing feedback – a commitment to feed back the results of engagement to the wider community and agencies affected

Monitoring and evaluation – a commitment to monitor and evaluate whether community engagement exercises are achieving their purpose and meet with the national standards.

Following the decision Councillor Hugh Hunter, the Leader of the Council said: “It is important that any community engagement undertaken by the Council, or on behalf of the Council is properly planned, well executed and effective when gathering information. The next stage is equally important, the way in which the information is used to form policy.

”The Public Consultation Officers Network will now make sure that all departments within the Council adopt the National Standards and the Group will monitor the way in which they are adhered to.”