Practical guide 02 · Available
Going beyond consultation
How can we go beyond consultation to achieve a deeper sense of community ownership?
We have heard broad agreement from Pride in Place areas that engagement should not be extractive or performative. However, achieving deep and authentic engagement with local residents, and even full community leadership, is not easy to achieve in practice.
Some local areas have struggled to make sure engagement is equitable. A QR code on a banner at a summer event can reach thousands of people, but some areas have found that most responses come from affluent parts of the local neighbourhood. Areas have also struggled to balance imagination with realism about budgets and timescales - in some instances, a community might struggle to picture a different future for the area. In others, people might be frustrated by issues - transport connections, or housing - that are beyond the scope of PiP to address.
The materials below speak to these issues. They include ways to go beyond consulting to more active community-led decision-making: allocating funds, co-designing services, and being involved in commissioning.
The numbers after each item show which of the five dimensions of ambition it speaks to most directly: (1) Shift the story · (2) Cultivate agency · (3) Strengthen relationships · (4) Crowd in capital · (5) Shape the system.
Resources we have checked
16 items-
A Ladder of Citizen Participation (opens in a new tab)
Free
An account of Sherry Arnstein's 'ladder of citizen participation', a way of understanding different depths of engagement. The publisher's copy is paywalled; this reproduction is freely redistributable.
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A Greater Manchester Participation Playbook (opens in a new tab)
Free
A toolkit of methods including participatory budgeting, participatory grant-making, citizens' assemblies and juries, legislative theatre and participatory design, illustrated by examples from Greater Manchester.
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Participation Playbook additional resource guide (opens in a new tab)
Free
A companion to the Participation Playbook including contact details for experts who can support the use of these methods.
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Participatory budgeting (opens in a new tab)
Free
An explanation of participatory budgeting, distinguishing between processes that inform a decision-maker and those that put part of a budget under direct citizen control. The materials also cover common failure modes.
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Participatory budgeting toolkit (opens in a new tab)
Free
A toolkit setting out ten steps for running a participatory budgeting process, from steering group to evaluation, written for community groups running the process themselves.
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Pride in Places? Participatory budgeting and realising community power (opens in a new tab)
Free
An argument for using participatory budgeting within Pride in Place, with ten recommendations, including a suggested sequence building up from year one to bolder approaches.
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Camden participatory grant-making toolkit (opens in a new tab)
Free
A toolkit on place-based participatory grant-making, covering how to recruit and pay resident panels. It references an example in which £6m was awarded by 200 residents with lived experience.
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Participatory grant-making templates (opens in a new tab)
Free
A set of templates and slide decks for running a resident grant panel, including panellist agreements, conflict of interest forms, interview questions and training slides.
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How do I set up a citizens' assembly? (opens in a new tab)
Free
A guide to commissioning a citizens' assembly, setting out ten criteria covering purpose, recruitment, independence and evaluation, with indicative budgets for a 50-person local assembly.
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Sortition (opens in a new tab)
Free
An explanation of sortition, or civic lotteries, including how to run a smaller version by door-knocking at neighbourhood scale.
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Newham permanent citizens' assembly (opens in a new tab)
Free
Documentation of the UK's first permanent council-level citizens' assembly: 50 randomly selected residents, topics chosen by resident vote, and returning members buddying with newcomers.
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Community-led research training toolkit (opens in a new tab)
Free
A training toolkit with eight ready-to-run session plans covering ethics, listening skills, survey fieldwork and interviewing, designed to be delivered by a volunteer with no research background.
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Community participatory action research toolkit (opens in a new tab)
Free
A toolkit on commissioning and paying community researchers, including recruitment templates, governance arrangements and rates of pay.
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Ten principles of peer research (opens in a new tab)
Free
A set of principles for peer research, covering how to draft research questions, to quality assurance, and fair payment.
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Community commissioning (opens in a new tab)
Free
An analysis of four escalating mechanisms for transferring power to communities - operational engagement, non-binding deliberation, binding deliberation, and formal governance.
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How to ensure a programme is resident-led (opens in a new tab)
Free
Principles for programmes in which residents genuinely lead decisions, with signposts into the wider evidence from Big Local.
Other creative ways to explore this theme
11 items-
Talk
How citizens, not politicians, are building the future (opens in a new tab)
Free
A talk by Jon Alexander on the limits of consultation, and on what it looks like to treat people as citizens rather than consumers of decisions.
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Film
The People vs Climate Change (opens in a new tab)
A documentary filmed inside a citizens' assembly, following members of the public as they explore the complex topic of climate change.
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Film
Kendal Climate Change Citizens' Jury (opens in a new tab)
Free
Films of a deliberative process in a small English town, as councillors help people to understand the limits of council authority.
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Tool
Dotmocracy (opens in a new tab)
FreeCreative Commons
A method for group decision-making aimed at surfacing agreement and dissent.
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Tool
Crowd Wise (opens in a new tab)
Free
A method for groups of 15 to 1,500 people, in which participants merge and rank options, producing composite outcomes.
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Tool
PlayDecide (opens in a new tab)
FreeCreative Commons
A printable card game that takes a mixed group to a shared position on a contested question, without professional facilitation.
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Tool
Methods for engaging young people (opens in a new tab)
Free
Twelve methods for engaging young people, with checklists and case studies, including youth grant award panels.
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Tool
Youth participation decision-making activities (opens in a new tab)
Free
Twenty-four activities for involving young people in decisions, with times, age ranges and information on the materials required.
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Book
Citizens (opens in a new tab)
A book by Jon Alexander arguing that people have been cast first as subjects and then as consumers, and could instead be cast as citizens.
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Training
Facilitation and public engagement training (opens in a new tab)
Facilitation and public engagement training, commissioned for a whole group rather than through open enrolment.
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Event
Decidim Fest, Barcelona (opens in a new tab)
A three-day annual conference for people running digital participation for city governments. (Note: 2026 meeting takes place 28-30 October).