The Jury's Out

At the Labour Party Leadership Hustings in London on Saturday, Gordon Brown talked quite a lot about Citizen's Juries and how they should be used more to deliberate on local issues.

This sounds like a good idea as they allow far more in-depth discussion on a given issue.

Whilst they are not a replacement for other forms of democratic process they can certainly add to the richness of a debate.

However in order for that to happen there needs to be support from central government to encourage more of them to occur and for them to be seen as a regular part of local engagement processes.

In the rush to get decisions made - and the Planning White Paper springs to mind - there is a danger that they will be seen as something that is unnecessary.

That need not be the case. As Jonathan Upton of TCC recently pointed out in a presentation he gave to an event organised by the Consultation Institute, the trick is for community engagement to start early and be ongoing.

If that approach becomes the norm, then a wider range of engagement tools, including Citizen's Juries, can be employed to develop options or even wide consensus on a host of controversial local issues.

Let's hope the Jury's in before long!