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New "Citizen Voice" to boost public say over infrastructure, says Green Alliance

The public must be given a louder voice when it comes to decisions over nationally significant infrastructure, according to a new report by environmental lobby group the Green Alliance. 

A new independent so-called Citizen Voice was, it said, vital to ensure a “rich debate” over infrastructure need and to provide “a well resourced source of engagement expertise”.

“As the public feels excluded from decision making, people become disengaged from policy and distrustful of the motives of those proposing and delivering it”. The Green Alliance

The Green Alliance report “Opening up infrastructure planning” also called for the creation of a new “civic society advisory council” to provide a more evidence based assessment of needs as a formal part of the infrastructure planning process. 

“As the public feels excluded from decision making, people become disengaged from policy and distrustful of the motives of those proposing and delivering it,” said the report. “Public engagement is critical to finding common ground between different stakeholders and making infrastructure delivery successful in the UK.”

The report called for three actions to help deliver the vital infrastructure needed to transition to a low carbon economy:

  • A strategic approach to infrastructure planning at national level with a civic society advisory council
  • Spatial planning at combined authority level, informed by local infrastructure dialogues
  • A new body to act as an impartial facilitator of public engagement – working title of Citizen Voice

This new Citizen Voice would, it said, “have a critical role in facilitating a rich debate around the identification of need and strategic direction” for both public and private infrastructure investment.

“Securing a public mandate for new infrastructure will be essential to successful delivery,” explained the report. “What is needed is a democratic structure to support the perpetual task of establishing that mandate.”

However, speaking at the launch of the report, shadow transport minister Lord Andrew Adonis highlighted the need to balance such consultation and public mandate against the absolute need for difficult decisions not to be ducked.

“The reality is that if there is to be any infrastructure built – that people either support or oppose – then decisions have to be made.” Lord Adonis

While Adonis agreed with the overarching sentiment of the Green Alliance report that effective public consultation was an important part of the planning process, he maintained that it remained the politicians’ role to make difficult but important decisions over nationally important infrastructure.

“The easiest thing for a government minister is to do nothing,” explained Adonis. “If you don’t want to get into an argument then doing nothing really is very easy in politics – and that includes coming up with ever more elaborate public consultations.”

Adonis said Labour’s proposed National Infrastructure Commission would deliver the required balance between public engagement, expert opinion and political accountability.

“The reality is that if there is to be any infrastructure built – that people either support or oppose – then decisions have to be made.” 

Adonis argued that the problem was not that the UK had suffered from too much top down planning which had imposed unnecessary infrastructure on the public. On the contrary, he said, the UK simply hadn’t made decision to commit sufficient investment to its vital infrastructure. 

“We spend far less on our infrastructure than [for example] the Germans,” he said. 

“Ultimately the state has to take a decision – the question is what processes does it go through to get to that decision?” he said. “Certainly government must be more open and engaged with the public but at the end of the day government has to commit and to act.”

However, the Green Alliance report maintained that the public must be allowed a greater role in this planning process.

“Politicians are elected with at best, a partial mandate to make decisions about the UK’s infrastructure,” it said. “The rest of that mandate must be earned through public engagement between elections,” said the report.

It also highlighted the current debate over fracking as “how not to do engagement”.

“Technical studies can be insufficient if the public doesn’t trust the government’s assurance that risks will be managed,” it said, pointing out that Chancellor George Osborne’s decision to allocate £5M of public funds to provide the evidence that fracking regulation was robust demonstrated the difficulties of building this vital trust.

The Green Alliance report “Opening up infrastructure planning. The need for better public engagement” is available from www.Green-alliance.org.uk

If you would like to contact Antony Oliver about this, or any other story, please email antony.oliver@infrastructure-intelligence.com.