*O&S 44
Consideration was given to a
report that provided a detailed overview of the One Council
Consultation process, including how the consultation was devised
and the range of methods used to engage with the public.
In her introduction, the
Committee Chairman emphasised that the purpose of this agenda item
was not to focus on the merits of the proposal, but to ensure that
the consultation process had been fair, reasonable and
balanced.
In discussion, reference was made to:-
(a)
the recent press release. The Leader was
aware of a number of concerns that had been raised at the recent
press release that had been issued. The
Leader stated that it was his personal view that a press release
should have been held back until after the Overview and Scrutiny
Committee had been given the opportunity to scrutinise the
consultation process and check that the applied methodology had
been deemed to be sound;
(b)
the ICT glitch. The Leader
reiterated that the glitch was outside of the
control of the Council and had occurred on the last day of the
consultation period. Officers proceeded
to advise that mitigating measures (including extending the
consultation period by one day) were put into place to minimise the
impact of this unfortunate disruption;
(c)
the telephone survey. Members
acknowledged that the telephone survey had been statistically
representative of the Borough population in terms of age and gender
and should be considered to be the most statistically valid and
representative aspect of the consultation process;
(d)
Council Tax Equalisation. In reply to a question, officers confirmed that
the questions related to Council Tax Equalisation were only
considered by respondents to the South Hams survey;
(e)
the restriction on IT equipment. A
Member expressed the view that the provision whereby a piece of IT
equipment could only be used once to provide a survey response had
been too restrictive. In reply, the
Leader advised that a risk analysis had been undertaken and it had
been concluded that a greater risk would have arisen from multiple
responses being generated from the same piece of IT
equipment;
(f)
the ability to obtain a paper copy of the survey. The Committee noted that the postcards that had
been delivered to each household in the Borough had made it clear
that residents could request a paper copy of the survey;
(g)
establishing
a standalone Facebook consultation page. The view was expressed that, instead of a
signposting page approach being adopted, a greater number of
responses would have been made during the consultation process if
the survey had been directly available from a standalone Facebook
consultation page;
(h)
the low response rates from the business sector. When questioned, officers informed that they had
engaged the Federation of Small Businesses for Devon; the Business
Information Point in Okehampton; the local Chambers of Commerce and
the Business Voice mailing list;
(i)
town and parish council responses. Whilst
some Members felt that a 52% response rate from town and parish
councils was low, ...
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