Sheffield Moors Partnership - Feedback Session

On Saturday 21st April Sheffield Moors Partnership held a meeting as part of their consultation. This is proving a messy operation and it's hard to be clear about where things are going and what the intentions are. It is of course possible that I'm the only one who's confused but I doubt it. First I'm not sure there has been any consultation at all yet.

Review: The Process So Far

The first three sessions (all the same in different venues) were described as Capturing Your Ideas and we were told specifically they were not consultation meetings. Instead they were an opportunity to put things down on post-it notes under four different headings. Questions were allowed for clarification at the beginning but these were limited and rationed - i.e. anyone asking a lot of questions was sort of discouraged; so no dialogue.
All those post-it note comments from the three meetings and those sent in later were gathered together and put on a document put up on the website  a few days before the recent meeting, not giving much time to digest the wide range of ideas. In fact I got the firm impression that very few of those attending the 21st April meeting had read much or any of the summary of comments. The earlier meetings by the way are now being described as 'workshops' a term that is useful I suppose because it's never been perfectly defined but sounds a good deal more dynamic and interactive than what happened.
The summary sheet of all the comments didn't stay up on the website long. It says that it's still there but when you try to access it an error message comes up and that's been so for several days now. Something like that has already happened with the minutes of the steering group - as I say a messy operation. (The Eastern Moors Partnership also had various problems and misleading claims in a similar way.) I've commented before about these websites. The SMP one was suggested by the SW Community Assembly as something to aid consultation but its achievement in that respect is distinctly patchy. For example I expected to see the comments of other people as they went up so others could respond. Instead there was a simple contact box.

Saturday 21st April

This was a morning meeting billed as a Feedback Session. I counted 25 people, very disappointing and I am guessing that people who were disappointed at the lack of interactivity at the earlier meetings would not have put a high priority on other meetings where public input might be minimal. Also SMP had circulated some people to say you had to book and places were limited. The only poster I saw was one that was emailed as an attachment but officers did say that 70 were distributed. Well....
As it happened there was an element of interactivity but very unsatisfactory from my point of view. We were put in groups with a piece of paper summarising headings that had been identified from the post-it-note comments. We had to score these according to what we wanted to talk about. The chairman, one of the partners, then added them up and we started with the highest score. I was unfortunate enough to be in a group (how were they chosen?) dominated by ladies who were mostly interested in things like signs and interpretation and archaeology. So I said nothing about these things. if I had that would have carried on the discussion well beyond the break - so as it worked out I said nothing at all before the break. The chairperson did not seem to notice my silence even though there were only five of us. After the break I did get in a few comments but on the most important subject (my interpretaion of course but it is the one that has most financial implication) nobody had the will or the knowledge to engage in a discussion. Anyway there was no time.
My main concern now is that SMP will take away the scorings made by these people as to what people wanted to discuss and use them to set the parameters and priorities for any further consultation meetings - if indeed there are going to be any, because their published timescale leaves little room for proper debate.
It needs to be said that this is looking exactly like the Eastern Moors Consultation. There again I wanted to discuss landscape and land management and was put in a group to discuss signage. There again the same lady was present talking for a very long time in a very quiet voice in an acoustic that was challenging even for good clear speakers.

Any consultation that does not encourage an exchange of views and a civilised debate about the key issues is not worthy of being called a consultation. It should also be easy for others to hear and see what is being said.
But do the managers want that? And is that a difficult question?