Councillors Look To Engage & Learn How To Say No

A Councillor before today’s meeting asked us: “What are you here for, there is nothing on the agenda that is interesting is there?”

The two items were regarding Consultants (report here), and ironically an item on engagement, with a large proportion of Wrexhamites saying they feel disconnected from Council work and more saying they would like an input.

Councillors were told that the people of Wrexham do want to engage with them and the Council as a whole, and received plans on how to enable it further than it happens at the moment.

We previewed today’s meeting with a look at the report here, which also gives context in terms of response stats for consultations.

What came across in the meeting was a desire to change the culture of Wrexham Council to one that is ‘pre-emptive and engaging’, plus quite a few other buzz words.

Cllr Hugh Jones explained: “It is a culture change from the Officer point of view as well as us, on how they respond and answer queries. There is room for improvement, there is an example today where I thought that is not the way to respond to the public”.

He did warn that “Cultural changes will take time.”

The report was well received, with one main criticism being that it did not include the message that while the Council can hear responses, it is not always possible to act on them.

Cllr Jones went on to say: “Due to lack of a policy in the past we have been reactive, so this policy should change that.”

Cllr Mike Morris said: “Due to the situation we are in we will have to say ‘no’. Nowhere in the report is the phrase ‘we will listen, but we can’t always do what you want’.

“It’s not people are not being listened to, it is just we can’t do anything about it. It needs to be explained better.

“There have been petitions about buses and Plas Madoc, but there has to be a realism we don’t have the money. There needs to be a section to outline that.”

The lack of a direct feedback loop was mentioned by several Councillors, with the implication that it is hard to engage if they are unaware of issues being raised elsewhere.

Cllr Ian Roberts took a wider perspective calling into question the reason why the Council exists at all, saying: “We have a lot of residents paying a lot of money, and I go through this report and I wonder what people want from the service we provide.

“Cut grass, do the street lighting and take the bin away. If they don’t know what we do a lot of this does not make a lot of sense. There is a lot this Council does, but they don’t know about it. Somewhere in this we need to ask what our five or 10 services should be, they are paying the money for a service, unless we deliver it we don’t need to be here.

“At some point we need to ask what the public want from us, otherwise we need to pack it in and let the Welsh Assembly get on with it. There is a big gap here.”

Feedback is being requested from Contact Centres to councillors, informing them on the specific issues that are being raised, so Members are able to become aware of what is occurring in their communities.

A request for this being enabled was asked twice, with Councillor Joan Lowe pushing for an answer. The Officer told the meeting such a feedback system was possible ‘in theory’, in fact was ‘ready to go’ on old IT systems, but as a new IT system is coming ‘it will need to be checked’.

Cllr Dana Davies said “We only hear the bad side of the process. I was following up a resident query and she had no complaint number, that was after three calls.”

Council Officers did note they see a lot of instances where complaints are raised due to them not being correctly dealt with at first contact.

Consultations were discussed, with Cllr Davies saying: “My issue with consultation is we do something then go and ask the public in a certain time frame. We should open this all year round, rather than having formal windows

“I would like to see an online form that is open, with preset fields, allowing feedback all the time.”

Another Councillor requested all consultations are fed on to social media so it is easier to share them with the community. Recognition was also made that things have moved on in the world and many people now ‘sign’ a petition digitally, and that Wrexham Council needs to have processes in place to access and recognise petitions rather than someone just hitting print on reams of paper.

Cllr Hugh summed up the aim of the policy saying: “We need to be more proactive getting ahead of the game rather than being reactive”.

The PDF report can be found here on the Council website, and if you scroll past the first few pages it does become quite readable to see what has been achieved, what is planned, and perhaps most importantly, why!