What is consultation and why do we need to consult?

Consultation is about asking what people think and feeding back what will happen as a result.

Consultation with the community is important to us, as it is the best way to find out if our services are meeting your needs. This information can then be used to improve the services for you by shaping future policy and feeding into our decision making.

We have a Council Consultation Policy, which provides guidance on what we need to consider and the methods that we should consider using.

We consult on:

• What you think about proposals/policy?
• What you would like from our services?
• How satisfied you are with our services?
• What we could do to improve our services?

How do we consult?

We consult our customers throughout the year on our services. It is really important for us to know what our customers think because it helps us to shape the services to suit you.

We use a variety of methods to consult including:

• postal surveys;
• telephone surveys;
• face to face interviews;
• focus groups; and
• through our shared citizen's panel  - Cumbria Voice.

Other Consultation

We also have to carry out a Place Survey every two years, the latest one was launched in October 2008. We are required to do these by the Government (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister). For more information on the Place Survey click here.

Cumbria County Council Consultation

Cumbria Council also carry out a range of consultation in Carlisle. You can view this at http://www.consultationfinder.com/cumbria/default.aspx?From=www.cumbria.gov.uk

You can use this to find out about current consultations, register your interest in future consultations and see what happened as a result of past consultations. Where you see a green flag you can also have your say online. Using the search engine you can look for consultations about a specific interest or put in your postcode to see what it going on locally.

Contact us

For further information or if you would like to get involved please contact one of the following members of the Policy and Performance Team:

policy@carlisle.gov.uk 

01228 81 7163

People, Policy and Performance

Policy and Performance Team

Carlisle City Council

Civic Centre

Carlisle CA3 8QG

Page updated : 08 August 2007