Your local council is supposed to ‘consult’ the public over proposals of all sorts. I’m sure you have seen some of these so-called consultations. Some do it well of course – despite what some people will tell you every council can’t fail at everything all the time. Unfortunately, though consulting the public is one of things they do make a mess of more often than not.

One reason, not very often stated in public, is that too many councillors and council officers think they should be allowed just to get on and ‘do their job’. Councils do employ experts and some councillors do build up considerable knowledge in particular areas. However, just because you are an expert on zebra crossings or car parking or planning doesn’t make you an expert on the area where whatever you are proposing is actually going to happen. You might like to think that, you might even believe that, but you are wrong.

The experts on a given street or neighbourhood are those who live there, who see it working at all hours, who know that Mr Smith at no 23 is elderly or that Mrs Jones at no 17 is disabled and that if you arrange the parking in that particular way you will make their lives more difficult than they need to be.

When the local council comes along and says, in effect, “We know better than you, what you need” two things happen – well three actually but I’ll discount the swearing and cursing behind closed doors for the moment!

First, people lose faith in the idea of democratic process, they see the council – councillors and officers alike - as ‘them’ organised against ‘us’. It isn’t surprising is it that the turnout for local council elections is so low?

Second, people lose faith in themselves. Very few people, indeed very few communities, have the stamina to sustain long campaigns against a determined local council. Eventually they give up and draw in on themselves, so that far from being the experts on their street, they might as well be living in the middle of a field. No one knows that Mr Smith is elderly, no one knows that Mr Smith is there and when he falls and breaks his hip he lies alone and in agony.

I promise not to use the term ‘Nanny State’ again, but that is where we end up when the State, whether national or local decides it knows what is best for us and will enforce it come what may.

This is all a bit of a longwinded preamble to a worrying story in the Wiltshire Times recently about Melksham Market Place, where Wiltshire County Council have come up with a wonderful twist on the idea of consultation.

They have indeed consulted the public about their proposals for the Market Place, (although if you saw the display it was to say the least amateurish). Now however, because one of the local groups involved, Melksham 1st, says that they need to consult further as they develop their proposals, the County have taken their ball away in pique and excluded Melksham 1st from further discussions (although they will be ‘consulted’).

No doubt this is tactically a brilliant move but it isn’t quite what public consultation is supposed to be about is it? It might seem that you can guarantee 100% support by excluding every one who disagrees, but that only postpones the discussion and almost certainly turns it into an argument – unless as I described above you grind down your opposition. I can’t think of any other reason to deliberately create conflict.

The Director of Melksham 1st, Carolyn Beale summed it up quite well I thought:

"I think Wiltshire County Council would like us to say we support everything they did. But the public are going to come back to us and say why did you support that when there was not adequate consultation?"



Watch this space…