PLC Public Sector reports:
Beacon councils have been told to make it a priority not to utilise confusing jargon to engage with customers in their municipalities after some blue sky thinking from the LGA. Therefore, down stream, the menu of options for engagement with service users and clients will be scaled-back.
Thinking outside the box, the LGA transformational initiative (which has been tested for soundness) issues a peer challenge and top-down guidelines in rebaselining and normalising the use of meaningful dialogue for engaging users.
Going forward, if actioned, the direction of travel has the potentialities for an upward trend in the quantum of quick wins in community engagement. If practitioners can champion a can do culture and use this toolkit from the bottom up to reconfigure their embedded strategic priorities across-the-piece, the interface with stakeholders should fast-track the core message of the need for cohesive communities with the flexibilities and freedoms to operate on a level playing field. Such an upward trend would be the fulcrum of a step change in the wellbeing of citizen empowerment.
This new framework is cautiously welcomed by PLC Public Sector. Plain English should be a shared priority for all in the public sector. The challenge for the LGA is to:
- be proactive;
- facilitate multi-disciplinary partnerships to achieve area-based outcomes;
- ensure cross fertilisation through joint working;
- promulgate robust resource allocation;
- use its leverage to prevent slippage; and
- enhance prioritisation to prevent this improvement lever being left on the seedbed.
If it fails, there will be no early win and the output of the new protocol will not be sustainable. The outcomes of this vision will be coterminous with the period that the story stays on the BBC website. All that will remain will be allegations of self-aggrandisement against the LGA.
* No prizes for guessing that all of the words in bold above feature on the banned list.