Providing Feedback and Evaluating Your Consultation
Stage 1 Feedback – what the Consultation findings are
It is important that you feed back the results of your exercise to everyone who has given up their time to take part. This will encourage them to take part in future consultation exercises. You will also be helping to influence general views or opinions of how good the Council is at keeping local people informed of developments. Use the Consultation Feedback Template as a guide (Appendix 8).
If you do not feedback, people will assume the Council doesn't take any notice of what they have said.
In addition to respondents, you should also consider providing feedback for:
Different audiences will have needs so feedback could take different forms and often a mix of techniques is best. Also remember that different audiences will want different levels of information. For example, residents may simply be interested in the headline findings of a satisfaction survey, while a Councillor may want the detailed results for the consultation of a development in their ward.
Possible communication methods include:
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Presentations
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Seminars and workshops
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Summary reports
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Feedback documents to respondents
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Detailed reports
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Through the Council's website
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Through the Council intranet
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Via the local media
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Through the Council's email system
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Residents newspaper or magazine
Stage 2 Feedback – The ‘So What?’ Question
This stage of feedback will often come later. It involves telling people what has been done in response to the consultation findings. A model for this is the West Dunbartonshire Citizens’ Panel which provides an A4 double sided ‘key points’ feedback on each survey (included in the subsequent survey) with an annual newsletter ‘Feedback’, outlining how the survey findings have influenced service delivery.
Evaluation
Evaluation of consultation exercises should check out the quality of the process (and whether you have met the National Standards for Community Engagement) and the success of the outcomes – the ‘impact’. Questions could include:
Rating various aspects of the consultation:
Quality of publicity
Quality/clarity of information
Specific needs met e.g. information in different formats, loop systems
Quality of presentations
Quality of documents
Quality of discussion
Quality of different aspects of venue
Opportunity to ask questions and give views
Feel treated with respect
Feel listened to
Quality of feedback
Feel views have made an impact
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