Engagement; what it all means!

Put simply, community engagement is the process of involving people in decisions that affect them. This can mean involving communities in the planning, development and management of services. Or, it may be about tackling the problems of a neighbourhood, such as crime, drug misuse or lack of play facilities for children.

Community engagement can take place for different reasons, e.g. to improve services, to build stronger local communities or to strengthen the democratic rights of residents. 

Five stances are often used to outline the elements of community engagement. In 1994 David Wilcox adapted these for use in partnership work which he describes in his Guide to Participation. These 5 stances range from information and consultation up to deciding together, acting together and supporting independent community interests.

Stance 1; Information – Information-giving underpins all other levels of participation and may be appropriate on its own in some circumstances. However, you are more likely to hit problems if all you offer is information and people are expecting more involvement

Stance 2; Consultation – Consultation is appropriate when you can offer people some choices on what you are going to do – but not the opportunity to develop their own ideas or participate in putting plans into action

Stance 3; Deciding together – Deciding together is a difficult stance because it can mean giving people the power to choose without fully sharing the responsibility for carrying decisions through

Stance 4; Acting together – Acting together involve short-term collaboration or forming more permanent partnerships with other interests

Stance 5; Supporting local initiatives -  Supporting independent community-initiatives means helping others develop and carry out their own plans. Resource-holders who promote this stance may put limits on what they will support

A number of national drivers support the Community Engagement agenda, these include;

The Sustainable Communities Act (2007) provides a channel for local people to ask central government to take action via their local authorities. Local spending reports mean that the government has to outline all spending in a local area

The Duty to Involve (2007) is a legal duty on authorities to inform, consult and involve local people in decision making across all public functions. The Duty is to involve a representative mix of local people (i.e. people who live, work or study in a local area), which should be a selection of individuals, businesses, groups or organisations that the authority considers are likely to be affected by or have a particular interest in the authority function in question. There is an explicit expectation that local authorities involve the third sector and Councillors are also expected to play a leading role.

The Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act (2009) gives communities and local people new rights to have a say in their local services, strengthen local democracy, reform local and regional governance arrangements and implement measures to drive economic regeneration.