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9.1 Open meetings are meetings arranged for members of the public to find out about and express their views on a particular issue. Attendance is open to any interested member of the public. Meetings are usually held at a public place (school or church hall, local sports centre etc) convenient for people to get to. The issue to be discussed is usually publicised in advance through posters, leaflets, letters, invitations etc.
9.2 Public meetings often have very low attendance, and those people who do attend often have a particular concern or view, which is not necessarily representative of the population as a whole.
9.3 Open meetings can, however, be a good way of encouraging dialogue between a service and its users, and of keeping members of the public informed. Used carefully, they can complement other forms of consultation.
Points to think about:
 | Issue: the issue being discussed will clearly have an impact on
attendance. More people will come if they are directly affected by or
concerned about the issue, or where their interest is attracted. Try to
make the material advertising the meeting as interesting as possible, but
make sure that people who do attend have not been misled about the content.
And have clear objectives for what you want to achieve from the meeting and
how you are going to take forward what comes out of it.
| Target audience: open meetings are unlikely to attract an audience
that is representative of the local population, and may contain more
retired and middle-aged people than young people so don't use them as
your only method of consultation. Think about your target audience, and
organise the meeting at an appropriate time and location.
| Collecting information: Think about why people might want to attend
an open meeting. As well as an interest in a particular issue, people might
be motivated to attend by a sense of community spirit or support for the
service. It is worth finding out a short questionnaire for people who
attend could give you lots of information, as much about who doesn¹t attend
the meetings as about who does. As a general rule, try to collect more
information than just numbers of attendees.
| Publicity: publicise the meeting as widely as possible to reach
your intended audience. As well as posters, leaflets etc, word of mouth is
an effective means of advertising. Speak to informal networks, parish
councils, community and interest groups etc.
| Practicalities: planning the practical side of a meeting can be
difficult if you have no idea how many people are going to attend, so you
might want to invite people to let you know if they are going to come, so
that you have some indication of numbers.
If you¹ve only planned for 30 people and 100 turn up, you may have problems.
| Meeting structure: think about how the meeting will be structured.
Make sure that any speakers know what is expected of them (eg how long they
should speak), and that the Chair is well briefed and is able to control
any more vocal members of the audience and limit repetitive discussion. If
appropriate, you might want to think about breaking the meeting up into
smaller workshop/discussion groups to give more people the chance to
participate.
| Reporting: recording views and reporting back can be difficult
in open meetings, particularly if there are large numbers of attendees.
Make sure that someone takes a note of the points raised (you may wish to
tape-record the proceedings). You can
ask people to vote on the main issues. But be careful about placing too
much weight on these results views recorded in this way should generally
only be used to give an indication of public views. You must make clear to
participants how their opinions will be taken forward.
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Pros
| Provides local opportunities for people to comment on matters that
affect them directly or indirectly.
| Offers a convenient and transparent way to demonstrate public
consultation/build up good relationships.
| Can be used to inform the public at the same time as getting views.
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Cons
| People who attend are unlikely to be representative of the local
population.
| Attendees' ability to contribute to a discussion about
service-wide, strategic priorities can be limited by a lack of knowledge
and possible lack of interest.
| Contributions will mainly be about local, topical or personal concerns.
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Costs: relatively cheap, depending on how you do it.
Use to: get a feel for public opinion on a particular topic/issue and
inform the public.
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The Devon and Cornwall Police Authority Annual Policing Plan
Members of the public were consulted on the Devon and Cornwall Police
Authority's policing plan, through a series of open meetings. The
consultation was organised and carried out by the police authority, in
co-operation with the police force. Handbills distributed at the
consultation meetings asked, 'What are the issues that you feel the police
service should address next year?'
The objectives of the meetings were to:
| hear about public concerns; and
| set out to improve public understanding of police operations and to
educate the public about policing matters.
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Publicity for the meetings included 2,500 letters and posters to parish
councils, neighbourhood watch groups and other local organisations.
The meetings were held in the evenings, in venues such as village halls and
schools. Each meeting started with a brief introduction and was followed by
a discussion. The topics discussed were summarised and listed on flip
charts. When the discussion had finished, the public were asked to vote for
the three issues that they considered to be most important to include in
next year's policing plan, in order of priority.
The vote, by 671 people at 16 meetings, identified a total of 60 issues
that individuals thought should be in the top three priorities for policing
in 1997/98.
Contact: Graham Davey tel: 01392 438781 fax: 01392 420274
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