Wrexham Council’s ‘Difficult Decisions’ Consultation to Launch Tomorrow

An extensive consultation asking residents how they think Wrexham Council should save millions of pounds is to launch tomorrow.

The ‘Difficult Decisions’ consultation, which is the fourth of its kind to have been launched by Wrexham Council, will last until October 26.

Approval to launch the 2017/18 budget consultation was backed unanimously by lead members at this morning’s Executive Board.

Lead Member for Communities and Partnerships, Cllr Hugh Jones said: “In presenting this report it is important to put the consultation in context. Members will see in the document the current and predicted financial situation are subject to change on the levels of funding from Welsh Government.

“What we know is we are looking for savings in the region of £5m – as a result that could go down or up. It’s important to understand the context in which we are operating.

Last year’s ‘Difficult Decisions’ consultation saw the highest response so far to Wrexham Council’s budget proposals, with 1700 people taking part.

This year there are plans to increase the number of participants, with a large media campaign to due to take place – along with themed weeks, member Q&A sessions on social media and a large information day on Queen’s Square.

Cllr Jones noted that Wrexham Council has ‘one of the most effective consultation processes’ in north Wales and that the number of participants they engage with is wide-ranging.

However he added there is a risk of people suffering ‘consultation overload’ in the next few months, with consultations due from Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board and also on the Wellbeing and Future Generations legislation.

The coalition of the data was queried by Cllr Dana Davies, who said: “The key point in consultation is the decision made on the back of the feedback from the public. How are we going to collate the don’t knows?

“We had a lot of situations last year where the public want more information. How they factor into it so that when we discuss results in workshop we have an idea upfront about how its collated.”

Cllr Jones noted: “As part of the consultation there is the opportunity for people to write in their specific views. It’s not so much about the don’t knows, it’s about collating and informing us on the pieces of information the public want to give us – but they may not want to give an answer on a scale of one, two or three.”

Wrexham Council’s Difficult Decisions consultation will launch on Wednesday 14 September and will last until Wednesday 26 October.