{"id":22863,"date":"2019-05-31T16:53:22","date_gmt":"2019-05-31T15:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ihbconline.co.uk\/newsachive\/?p=22863"},"modified":"2019-05-31T16:53:22","modified_gmt":"2019-05-31T15:53:22","slug":"ihbcs-cpd-boost-from-tci-when-public-meetings-go-wrong-they-can-make-a-bad-situation-so-much-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=22863","title":{"rendered":"IHBC\u2019s CPD boost from TCI: When public meetings go wrong\u2026. they can make a bad situation so much worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"logo\"As the Consultation Institute (TCI) \u2013\u00a0\u00a0which featured at the IHBC\u2019s\u00a0<\/a>2018 Belfast School, <\/a>in the form of Quintin Oliver<\/a>, Director, Chair & Founder – is asking for examples of public meetings, Perry Walker, founder of Talk Shop, suggests that sometimes we can learn more from worst practice than from best practice, and to this end shares this nightmare.<\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

The Consultation Institute writes:<\/p>\n

Our story begins over ten years ago, in the village of Wing. Wing is in Buckinghamshire, between Aylesbury and Leighton Buzzard, not a million miles away from tCI global headquarters. In the absence of satisfactory public transport, villagers began campaigning for a bypass, that being the only possible improvement they knew about. The local council didn\u2019t think it would get funding for a bypass. In 2007 it therefore worked closely with Friends of the Earth (both providing \u00a320,000) to commission an expert to identify alternatives. The alternatives were then evaluated by an expert panel, which found that a bypass scored below several of the alternatives.<\/p>\n

The results were presented at a public meeting, which the parish council offered to organise. This was intended to present the alternatives. But 400 people turned up, and those who spoke up did so mainly to ask when they were going to get their bypass. As so often happens, only the extremes were heard, and the middle ground, including the alternatives, was squeezed out. A statement that, \u2018We won\u2019t get a bypass funded but there are other things we can do\u2019 was interpreted as, \u2018You are condemning my child to be run over outside my house\u2019. When some people from a nearby village expressed worries about traffic that might be displaced to their village by a bypass, the response caused Stephen Joseph, of the Campaign for Better Transport, who was chairing the meeting, to \u2018fear he was about to witness ethnic cleansing\u2019. It was hijacked into a meeting solely about the bypass: was it yes or no? As it seemed to be \u2018no\u2019, the villagers were apoplectic: they felt that they had been betrayed. The councillor for Wing felt that she had to support a bypass. The result was a stalemate, with the council officially supporting a bypass, but no prospect of funding.<\/p>\n

A subsequent public meeting, also organised by the parish council, debated where a bypass should go. But there was a second stalemate, between those in the north of the village, who wanted it to the south, and those to the south of the village, who wanted it to the north. The Institute\u2019s article headed \u2018When public meetings go wrong\u2026\u2019 begins \u2018this begs the question\u2019 \u2026 \u2018according to whom?\u2019 In this case, the fact that these meetings went very, very wrong is probably the one thing that everyone involved could agree on.<\/p>\n

Read more….<\/a><\/p>\n

See some takes on public meetings from \u2018Parks and Recreation\u2019, at YouTube<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the Consultation Institute (TCI) \u2013\u00a0\u00a0which featured at the IHBC\u2019s\u00a02018 Belfast School, in the form of Quintin Oliver, Director, Chair & Founder – is asking for examples of public meetings, Perry Walker, founder of Talk Shop, suggests that sometimes we … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ihbc-newsblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22863"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22865,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22863\/revisions\/22865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}