Questions for the council: whose Community charter?

BCC carried out a series of 12 engagement workshops in October and November 2023. However, the participation was capped at only 20 participants for each workshop, which limited opportunities for meaningful and inclusive engagement.

At the workshops, residents were told that one of the outputs of these sessions would be the production of a Community Charter.

This was a commitment that the BCC expressed in its communication in September 2023, through the “Ladywood Regeneration Scheme FAQs”.

Yet, the activities carried out at these engagement workshops were not sufficiently and appropriately designed to produce such a charter.

The workshop began with the council’s representatives delivering an overview of the project, and were followed by group workshops which aimed to elicit participants’ evaluation of their concerns, possible solutions, what they valued to be important and what participants wished to know more about. Participants were asked to add sticky notes and circle and comment on any promising ideas on a large piece of paper.

We are concerned that the questions asked were too generic and the methodology used to elicit responses too undefined to be fit for purpose.

At the outset, the engagement workshops were presented and designed as information sessions and were not conducted as a hands-on activities focused on producing an output, the significance of which was not fully explained to participants.

Thoughts and ideas on sticky notes were not read aloud to and shared with the workshop’s participants who should have been then asked to work together to prepare and vote their own lists of principles to be included in the prospective charter. 

For instance, participants were told that a Community Charter was not a binding legal document. We regret to note that this is not fully correct.

As in the case of the Lewisham Residents’ Charter, for instance, the Community Charter is a document that lists the council’s commitments to residents. As such, the charter sets out legitimate expectations and if failing to fulfil them, following common law, the council is potentially subject to judicial review.

For that reason, we demand residents be consulted on a preliminary draft of the Community Charter, with the possibility of re-running engagement workshops with the intent of rephrasing and reframing the draft of the charter.