Using participatory consultation to help improve local government performance and services

This article describes a project of participatory consultation for waste management conducted by the Environment and Consumer Services Department of the Edinburgh Council. A decision was taken to use Participatory Appraisal (PA) methods as had previously been applied successfully in other departments, and a main aim was to engage persons who are normally not involved in public debate and who are difficult to reach with techniques such as questionnaires, public meetings etc. People were asked to indicate on a map where they perceived problems with waste in the council, and this was merged into a master map. The authors list the benefits of the project as being cost-effective, reaching out to a sector of the public which is normally overlooked, not raising unrealistic expectations, taking into account persons of all ages, and easy accessible. They conclude that the participative method proved a useful technique for providing primary information allowing the council to plan the use of their resources to tackle issues of most concern to the local community.