1. Baroness Buscombe, quoted in proceedings, 'Is consultation the new red tape?', London, The Debating Group, 25 October 2004

2. Communities and Local Government, Planning for a Sustainable Future - White Paper, TSO, Norwich, May 2007, Cm 7120, p 3, available at www.tsoshop.co.uk

3. Communities and Local Government, Homes for the future: more affordable, more sustainable - Housing Green Paper, TSO, Norwich, July 2007, Cm 7191, available at www.tsoshop.co.uk

4. Communities and Local Government, Code for Sustainable Homes; A Step Change in Sustainable home Building Practice, CLG, London, December 2006

5. Communities and Local Government, Code for Sustainable Homes; Technical Guide, CLG, London, April 2007

6. Communities and Local Government, Code for Sustainable Homes; Technical Guide, CLG, London, October 2007

Britain's "Consultation Overload" - debated but not abating

'Our current climate is one of consultation overload, and it is this overload that has, despite all good intentions, become a hindrance, not only in Parliamentary matters, but also to those who run the consultation process and those who participate in it'. (1)

So argued Baroness Buscombe, the Conservative party Shadow Minister for Culture, Media, Sport and Legal Affairs. She had proposed the clear motion "Consultation overload is the new red tape" at The Debating Group in October 2004. This is a Parliamentary group concerned with media and marketing, and which has been holding debates in the House of Commons since 1975. The motion was carried.

'Consultation', she sensibly said, '... involves you and then swallows you up. You become part of somebody's process and agenda. You will probably not have any power to influence that agenda, but the mere fact that you have taken part will be enough to enable those consulting to tick the box that you have collaborated, you are involved and they are being inclusive. Your access equals their validation'. (1)

If Baroness Buscombe thought there was "consultation overload" in 2004 she had only seen the beginning of government's desperate search for validation, now under Gordon Brown's premiership. Created in 2006 out of the wreck of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Communities and Local Government is a good example of a government department bent on validating itself through consultation over seemingly endless reform.

For those consulted the task of responding to this lack of CLG confidence and bureaucratic cynicism is exhausting. Over the summer of 2007 alone there were easily 21 consultation exercises being simultaneously administered by the CLG, with no sign of that reformist hyperactivity abating. These were often far from trivial subjects, but behind the shifting jargon the consultation documents invariably fail to challenge policy conventions. After a while the documentation gives the collective impression that government is attempting to conceal political weakness behind tiresome piles of paper.

Take for the first example the five consultations on planning reform that started on 21 May and closed on 17 August 2007. Perhaps a number of consultees postponed their summer holiday to address:

• Planning for a Sustainable Future - White Paper
• Planning Fees in England: Proposals for Change
• Changes to Permitted Development: Consultation Paper 2 - Permitted Development Rights for Householders
• Planning Performance Agreements: a new way to manage large scale major planning applications
• Improving the Appeal Process in the Planning System: Making it proportionate, customer focused, efficient and well resourced

The first of these, the White Paper, was 220 pages long. Following the complete overhaul of the planning system in 2004 the White Paper consultation looked forward to further changes in 2008. This sounds ambitious. Yet it is a continuation of the denial of development rights dating from 1947, and an expansion upon the commitment to public consultation originating in the late 1960s, when new housing production was deprioritised. The White Paper put it like this:

'It is 60 years since the landmark 1947 Town and Country Planning Act provided one of the pillars of post-war reconstruction, renewal and regeneration. Our planning system has served us well, with regular and sometimes radical overhauls, such as in the late 1960s, and again most recently in 2004. It has long been the model for many other countries to follow, and our intention is that our planning system should continue to set the standard in terms of the quality of outcomes for the individual citizen, the local community, developers and consumers of the system, and in terms of promoting sustainable and inclusive patterns of urban and rural development.' (2)

If you responded you may consider yourself to be in a category of "us", included with the CLG, even if the government has another meaning in mind when it talks of "our planning system". It is their planning system, and the wheeze of "permitted development rights" simply reinforces the point, as in the earlier consultation running from 4 April to 27 June 2007:

• Changes to Permitted Development: Consultation Paper 1 - Permitted Development Rights for Householder Microgeneration

These six were a prelude to three consultations running from June to the second week of September 2007:

• Delivering Housing and Regeneration: Communities England and the future of social housing regulation
• Tenant Empowerment - A consultation paper
• A Framework for Fairness: Proposals for a Single Equality Bill for Great Britain Consultation

Overlapping with the seven running from July to October 2007 was the important 133 page Green Paper on housing. (3) Not forgetting the "done deal" to turn the emerging Code for Sustainable Homes into the Building Regulations. Set to make compliance with the 28 page introduction to the CSH published in December 2006, (4) and the 213 page technical guide of April 2007, (5) updated to 225 pages in October, (6) compulsory:

• Longer time limits for prosecution of breaches of Building Regulations - Consultation
• Proposed amendments to the Central List Regulations: National non-domestic rates and local loop unbundling
• Homes for the future: more affordable, more sustainable - Housing Green Paper
• The future of the Code for Sustainable Homes - Making a rating mandatory
• Shared Ownership and Leasehold Enfranchisement
• Local Government Finance Formula Grant Distribution
• Modernising Empty Property Relief

Not forgetting the three that ran from August to October 2007:

• Clarifying the Right to Buy rules: a consultation paper
• Mechanism for setting Guideline Rents in Housing Revenue Account subsidy 2008-09 and 2009-10: Consultation
• Overriding Easements and Other Rights - Consultation

With two more, announced as of 25 August 2007, running from August to November 2007:

• Tolerated trespassers: A consultation paper
• Transfer of Planning Appeals to Inspectors: A Consultation Paper

That makes 21 over the seven months between May and November, but I am sure there were some I didn't notice, with still more to come for the New Year. It is effectively a full time job for anyone to respond to these consultations. No-one can really manage comprehensive responses.

Consultation overload is more than the new "red tape". The overload would continue even if the government wanted to cut bureaucracy, since the breadth and intensity of consultation is inversely proportional to political strength. HM Government, like their loyal opposition parties, can only offer weak reform to their various constituencies. They consult on pathetic compromises in an effort not to seriously challenge anyone, and to avoid being held politically responsible for anything. This is tinkering with the administration, not political leadership.

Ministers and officials might prefer not to act bureaucratically, but the ever more "inclusive" bureaucracy of consultation serves to conceal the limitations of the policy options government is willing to consider. This is not the democratic contest of seriously opposed ideas, had out in Parliament, argued over by the electorate and lobbyists, but a process of exhaustive and exhausting social inclusion.

The best advice is try not to get swallowed by the government's endless consultation exercises. Responding only encourages "them" - the Government - to resort to more consultation that wears everyone out.

Any "good intentions" are an irrelevance.

Ian Abley 06.11.2007

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