Mary Reid

On Tuesday evening the Executive Committee at Kingston agreed to two important strategies.

The first was about consultation. At present there is no co-ordination of consultations across the Council so people can get a bit irritated if they are consulted too frequently. The new system will use a diary to avoid this.

But the bulk of the strategy was in the form of guidelines. These should hopefully ensure that all consultations are clear and use appropriate methods. Consultations can be done through surveys, by letter, on the phone, online, face-to-face, and in meetings.

In time I am keen for Kingston to use one of the online consultation tools like those in Bristol and elsewhere. We should also be exploring how the Council's consultations fit in with those of the health services and the police.

The second strategy that we agreed was on Children and Young People's Participation. This complements the Consultation Strategy but goes beyond. Young people should be encouraged to be involved in decisions that affect them, both as users of services and as citizens. Professionals who work with children need to be given the skills to make sure this happens.

As I said at the meeting, all departments of the Council should think about consulting children and young people as a matter of course and not restrict it to issues that are specific to them.