Consultation

We're proud of West Berkshire, it's a great place to live and 86% of you agree. It's one of the highest satisfaction ratings in the UK. We want to make sure West Berkshire stays that way and that everyone who lives here can enjoy a good quality of life. That's why we consult people in West Berkshire about improving their local services and involve them in shaping the future of their communities.

We are committed in West Berkshire to listening and responding to our community. In the way we plan, prioritise and deliver our services, it is essential that we actively consult and engage people. This enables us to better understand how what we do impacts on those in our communities as well as how we can develop our services to better meet the needs and expectations of people in West Berkshire.

We strive to ensure consistently high standards of consultation across all service areas. This includes effective planning, setting clear objectives, using appropriate methods and timescales and making maximum use of results and feeding back what has happened as a result to participants. Our  West Berkshire Council Consultation Policy 2013 [109kb] underpins our approach to consultation and sets out our commitment to consultation. It aims to ensure that appropriate and robust information is collated to support a process of informed and transparent planning and decision-making.

Through our Consultation Finder  database you can access all West Berkshire's consultations in a single place. Through Consultation Finder your can:

• Search for, read about and take part in current consultations.
• Register your interest and sign up to take part in future consultations.
• Find out what happened as a result of past consultations and get access to the findings on-line.

A number of residents across West Berkshire are getting involved in the decision making of the Council and have agreed to share their opinions on issues of importance in West Berkshire ranging from crime, to the environment, to adult social care, to our waste service, to our roads. This is called the West Berkshire Community Panel. 

Feedback from the panel helps us to identify and concentrate on particular issues and needs in your community, as well as providing views on how we can improve things. Panel members may be invited to contribute to group discussions, or complete online questionnaires. Click here to find out more and register to take part.

We have also published our consultation toolkit through these pages. This is a concise, easy to read, step-by-step guide for anyone designing and running a consultation exercise. It takes you through each of the stages of designing, setting up, running, analysing and feeding back consultation as well as provides you with key resources and contacts for making sure all key groups are included and have the opportunity to participate.

A number of short 'how to ...' guides have also been produced and are available in the 'download' section of this page.