On 9th May 2024, the Policy and Performance Review Board met to consider a briefing paper on how Richmond Council engages with residents.
Cllr Richard Warren
OK moving onto agenda item 5. Richmond Council’s approach to consultations, a briefing note. I’d just like to say just before we start this item that the board is not a decision-making body, just to remind everyone here that we’re not a decision-making body, but we are concerned with reviewing policy and making recommendations to the decision-making committees. The PPRB has no influence over specific decisions made in other areas of the council. So we have one registered speaker for this item, Martin Baker. Martin please come to the microphone and you probably know which button to press. OK good. So you have three minutes to speak, when you’re ready. Thank you.
Martin Baker
Thank you, Chair. I’m going to start by making two requests.
Firstly, will the Council commit to publishing full results as a matter of policy? I looked back at the first 10 consultations that closed in 2023 and only 40% of them have results published. In the interests of open and transparent decision-making, can we get that figure to 100%?
Secondly, could it be made easier for people to find these consultation results? It would be good if they were directly accessible from the original consultation page rather than often being buried deep within the Council website.
So onto my own experience of the Council’s inconsistent publishing policy.
The first example was a consultation that ended in September 2021 where residents were asked for their views on the future of the health suite at Pools on the Park. These results were not published so I filed an FOI request. Two months later, I was told my request had been refused in accordance with Regulation 12(4)(d), which doesn’t actually apply in this case.
After a second internal review, the Council admitted the exemption had been wrongfully applied but changed the exemption reason to Section 22 of the FOI Act on the grounds that all information for future decisions should be published at the same time. I was told the survey results would be published when the proposal went to committee in three months’ time.
Another 11 months passed before the matter was actually brought to committee. Yet on the Thursday before the Tuesday committee meeting, I noticed the results were missing from the background papers. I emailed Matthew Eady and the next day the results were finally made public showing 76% of respondents opposed the Council’s proposals. However, the reports agenda pack was not updated with a missing document. I have little confidence that many committee members I spoke to around that time actually read these consultation results.
It seems rather ironic that the Council hid these results from residents for over two years and then failed to publish them at the same time as the other information.
The second example is the Leisure Centre survey carried out in October 2022 and good news, the full results were published in July 2023. There were no concerns whatsoever about disclosing these results ahead of any committee decision.
Curiously though, this survey was not mentioned in Matthew Eady’s report on the health suite even though page 8 says “74 respondents stated they were missing a health suite while 13 wanted more studio space.” Neither were these survey results included as a background paper. I will leave you to ponder whether ESCSC members were fully informed when they approved the Council’s proposal.
The final consultation I want to briefly mention was three months ago gathering residents’ views about the approved future group exercise studio. I filed an FOI request for these results and it was refused using Section 22 exemption. This has now been escalated to the Information Commissioner’s Office. Thank you very much.
Cllr Richard Warren
Thank you very much and thank you for finishing within the three minutes.
Do members have any questions for clarity? No? OK. Thank you very much Mr. Baker.