by Claire Spencer

Background

At Full Council in January 2014, Birmingham councillors debated the ‘Are Ward Committees Fit For Purpose?‘ report. Ward Committees – for those who don’t know – are how the Council reaches out to citizens at ward level – it is a forum to discuss issues that affect neighbourhoods, as well as signing off neighbourhood forum grants and any Community Chest applications. The report sought to define a set of standards that Ward Committees should be held to, while still preserving the diversity of approach that is so necessary in a city with so many different localities and communities.

As someone on the Districts & Public Engagement Overview & Scrutiny committee  – and someone who really wants to maximise the influence of people over the world around them – I was really keen to speak about this report, and thought citizens in Moseley & Kings Heath would be interested to read the transcript, which is below. You can also watch it online, here.

Thank you, Lord Mayor.

This report is one of the reasons I was so pleased to be part of the Districts and Public Engagement Committee – because it is a report that deals with nothing more or less than with the power and influence that citizens have over their city.

It’s funny that so many people are so timid when it comes to using those words Power. Influence. They’re so frequently associated with abuses of power and influence that people sometimes don’t think that they are anything to do with them, a positive tool to shape the world around them. And in a society like that, it is all too easy for power to be taken away from those same people – sometimes with the best of intentions, sometimes not. And in our city, getting our Ward Committees right, creating spaces where citizens lead the agenda, interrogate strategies and hold the Council to account is one way that we can ensure that power lies where it ought to.

I do say one way, and I hope the Chair, Councillor Zaffar, will forgive me for banging on about this particular point. Because even the most perfect Ward Committee would not be enough if it were all that we did to engage with our fellow citizens. I don’t think it was entirely clear in the Kerslake report that Ward Committees are one point in a nexus of engagement tools and fora. Regardless of party affiliation, we all knock on doors. We all attend meetings convened by people in our communities. Some of us even join in with conversations they overhear on buses, or follow hashtags associated with their neighbourhood on Twitter. No, this is simply one method of engagement that has constitutional status in this Council, and as such is one we must take responsibility for getting right, without making it so controlled that it loses all its relevance.

I’d particularly like to highlight the section on Citizen Entitlements, which I think are useful standards for us to hold Ward Committees to, without making them unnecessarily prescriptive or uniform. I’d particularly like to highlight b), c), f) and g) – Action Focused, Citizen Influence, Access to Information and Clear Communication. Action Focused, because there is nothing more frustrating than having the same conversation which highlights the same things that “must be done”. Citizen Influence, because we didn’t become councillors – the representatives of citizens on the Council – to stop citizens from setting the agenda. Access to Information, because holding the Council to account should not be a struggle. And Clear Communication – because if I have to choose between ‘affixing the seal’ and “these actions will be done within x weeks” or “we’ll organise that meeting with y this month, I’d take the latter pair every time.

Working towards the recommendations in this report will not ‘fix’ engagement, nor do I think it asks anything of councillors that we should not be willing to do – but I hope it brings us all clarity of purpose, and a reminder that we can always reach for higher standards when it comes to maximising the influence of the citizens of Birmingham.