Councillor attitudes towards citizen engagement: New report

Summary

This new report shares findings from a survey of over 100 councillors across the UK, carried out as part of Public Square. The councillors were asked about their attitudes towards participative and deliberative processes.

This survey came about because of an interest in what leads some councillors to embrace more participative or deliberative forms of local democracy.

What's in the report

The report looks at awareness of participative and deliberative procesess such as Participatory Budgeting and Citizens Assemblies, and attitudes towards the appropriateness of applying participative approaches to different policy areas. It also examines how these attitudes vary across different groups of councillors.

Alongside these quantitive findings, councillors were given space to share some of their views on more participative forms of democracy. These show councillors grappling with issues like inclusivity, representativeness and accountability. This suggests that it's important to talk more about some of these issues when building awareness of participative and deliberative approaches.

Read the report

This report was written by Alex Parsons and Rebecca Rumbul from mysociety, as part of Public Square. You can find out more, and access the full report, at this blogpost.

Thumbnail image: "Surrey County Council chamber" by surreynews is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0