Consultations

Our residents are at the heart of all we do. We’re committed to involving our residents in the areas where your voice can help shape our services to benefit every resident, community and business. When we’re making decisions about our county, we’ll ask for your opinions, knowledge and experience to help us get things right.

Our Charter sets out a standard for public consultation and engagement to make sure that residents have a fair say in shaping their community, driving the prosperity of our county and promoting sustainable and responsible growth.

By consultation and engagement, we mean asking our residents for their views. We’ll usually consult when we need to make a specific decision. This may be regarding a plan, policy or a service. Engagement is when we seek more general views on how we run services we provide or what should be our priorities.

Our principles of consultation and public engagement are:

We’ll consult or engage the residents and other stakeholders when the proposals affect them or when there is a reasonable expectation to consult.
We’ll use plain English and make sure our consultations are easy to understand and respond to.
We’ll provide information and support to help residents understand the subject when responding to our consultations.
We’ll make our consultations available to everyone by providing different ways to have a say, this might be through online surveys, focus groups, workshops and postal surveys.
When specific groups of people may be particularly affected by our proposals, we will set out how to identify and involve them.
We’ll make every effort to enable residents across different age and ethnic groups, backgrounds and experiences to give their views.
We’ll allow enough time for you to consider and respond to the consultations.
We’ll seek to reduce the burden of consultation by reviewing existing information such as research, surveys and public opinion polls.
All our consultations will be published on the council’s website so that residents and stakeholders can see what is up for decision and how to take part.
When the consultation ends, we will collate your responses and tell you how your views have been considered.

Consultations

Open consultations

Closed consultations

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