Cost: £125 +VAT

The obligation on local authorities to consult on proposed service changes, whether these result from budget cuts or changes prompted by Covid-19 is arising with increasing frequency. Consultation might be in relation to a range of topics: school admission arrangements, transport, planning, service reconfiguration, or changes to areas such as council tax and budgets, but many of the legal considerations and challenges are common across these areas.

Consultation on some of these topics is likely to attract significant interest while in many cases they present challenges in communicating detailed and technical considerations. Residents who are upset to see their library closing or reducing its opening hours or are concerned about local planning policy changes may consider a challenge to the way in which the consultation was conducted as part of their objection to the change.

There is no one size fits all approach to consultation, but this course will consider legal principles and learn from recent case law to enable participants to spot potential issues in consultations and, if necessary, robustly defend legal challenges. The course will be broken down into three sessions and will allow attendees to engage with the speaker and each other, share experience and ask questions.

This course will cover:

• Impact of Covid-19 on consultation – in particular, consideration of whether consultation can be exclusively online
• At what stage of proposal development should consultation be undertaken?
• Optioneering – is it always necessary to present more than one choice?
• Complying with the public sector equality duty – an ongoing obligation
• Recent cases applying the Gunning principles
• Related considerations: governance, information requests, judicial review
• Responding to challenges if they arise

This course is aimed at those who wish to develop a deeper knowledge and understanding of the law of consultation, providing new insights to enable participants to carry out their role effectively. It offers the opportunity to build on legal principles in the law of consultation and focus in particular on practical challenges in running a compliant consultation.