Community participation - Joseph Rowntree Foundation

Community participation
they are focused on the things that people most immediately care about and can
respond to them. 13 The question is, can we harness this capability so that formal
governance also benefits from it, by empowering these organisations to act as
everyday intermediaries between citizens and formal governance?
Of course, the best community representatives already choose to work through this
civic infrastructure as a way of mobilising support and ensuring legitimacy. Building
on this existing good practice, are there aspects of institutional design that could turn
this from a choice made by some to a requirement expected of all?
One democratic innovation that might help would be the establishment of a local
right of initiative. This would allow citizens to set the political agenda directly by
demanding a local body like a local authority or police force to take action on a
particular issue of concern. This is similar to the ‘trigger’ powers being envisaged as
part of the Government’s plans for neighbourhood governance, 14 but is more
ambitious in the types of responses that might be demanded. Having a right of
initiative ensures that citizens can put something on an institution’s agenda even if
their community representatives are reluctant to do so. Community organisations
would be well placed to mobilise the collection of the signatures required to trigger
the right of initiative, creating a clear incentive for community representatives to
engage them before that became necessary.
Long-term capacity building for participation
A key part of The 1% Solution is to ask which interventions, in the long term, stand
the best chance of promoting participation among ever greater numbers of people.
A sensible option would be to merge local education authority (LEA) school governor
services, Community Empowerment Networks and other community participation
support functions to create a local Community Governance Service. The long-term
goal of such a service should be to grow and diversify the pool of people involved in
governance. It would play the key co-ordinating role in local areas, marketing
governance opportunities, commissioning training and support, engaging in
outreach, facilitating networking by participants, supporting succession management,
and helping participants to consult, engage, mobilise and sustain relationships with
their communities rather than being cut off from them.
Responsibility for delivering this service should be outsourced to local community
organisations that have the know-how about mobilising people to get involved, and
the infrastructure to link formal participation with the community groups, clubs and
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