What does ‘good’ look like for engagement of citizens in the performance and accountability of their local authority? What methods and approaches work best and what can we do to improve citizen engagement?”

Background

Further building our evidence and understanding on which public services, delivered at which level of government, deliver greatest public value and what we can learn from different policy approaches taken across the UK.

Next steps

The lead contacts are: Lesley Smith, Senior Principal Research Officer, Analysis, Research and Co-ordination Unit, Analysis and Data Directorate: Lesley.Smith@levellingup.gov.uk and David Hughes, Head of the Chief Scientific Adviser’s office: psChiefScientificAdviser@levellingup.gov.uk.

Source

This question was published as part of the set of ARIs in this document:

DLUHC Areas of research interest GOVUK

Related UKRI funded projects

  • Reframing Citizen Relationships with the Public Sector in a Time of Austerity: Community Empowerment in England and Scotland

    This project will examine the Scottish and UK public sector's approach to community empowerment and its impact on fostering citizen-state relationships in a time of austerity. Launching its 'Big Society Agenda', the UK C...

    Funded by: AHRC

    Lead research organisation: Durham University

    Why might this be relevant?

    The project examines the approach to community empowerment by the public sector in Scotland and England, which is directly related to citizen engagement in the performance and accountability of local authorities.

  • Leapfrog: Transforming Public Service Consultation by Design

    This project will be a collaboration with community partners to co-design and evaluate new approaches to consultation. Consultation, the engagement of communities in public service decision making becoming an increasingl...

    Funded by: AHRC

    Lead research organisation: Lancaster University

    Why might this be relevant?

    The project focuses on co-designing and evaluating new approaches to consultation, which is relevant to improving citizen engagement in the performance and accountability of local authorities.

  • Holding local leaders and local service provision to account: the politics of implementing a local governance performance index

    This research is exploring practical ways in which citizens in low income countries can hold their local leaders to account for their performance in delivering basic services and in reducing poverty. In recent years the...

    Funded by: ESRC

    Lead research organisation: Mzumbe University

    Why might this be relevant?

    The project explores practical ways for citizens to hold their local leaders accountable for delivering basic services, which is relevant to improving citizen engagement in the performance and accountability of local authorities.

  • Collaborative Governance in Cities under Austerity: An Eight-case Comparative Study

    Context Austerity governance, defined as a sustained agenda for reducing public spending, poses new challenges for the organisation of relationships between government, business and citizens in many parts of the world. ...

    Funded by: ESRC

    Lead research organisation: De Montfort University

    Why might this be relevant?

    The project directly addresses citizen engagement in local authority performance and accountability under austerity governance.

  • Participatory Policy Learning and New Municipalism

    I will extend my PhD research on evaluation to open up a new agenda in the field of public policy. The core principle of evaluation is that evidence should be used to identify the impact of an intervention and inform fut...

    Funded by: ESRC

    Lead research organisation: University of Birmingham

  • Activating the 'Big Society': Developing evidence on the underlying conditions for individual and community co-production

    Co-production-professional and citizens working together to deliver public services- has long been a focus of attention and that attention will increase in an era of austerity and driven by ideas about activating the Big...

    Funded by: AHRC

    Lead research organisation: University of Birmingham

  • What Works Scotland Centre

    What Works Scotland will be a collaborative centre bringing together staff from the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, other academics and key non-academic partners. Its aim is to support the use of evidence to plan ...

    Funded by: ESRC

    Lead research organisation: University of Glasgow

  • Accountability, Efficiency, Improvement and Change in UK Local Public Services: The Role of Benchmarking and External Performance Assessment

    The knowledge exchange will facilitate the development of a network of policy makers and practitioners who will work with social science researchers to analyse and respond to the challenges of performance assessment in p...

    Funded by: ESRC

    Lead research organisation: CARDIFF UNIVERSITY

  • Connecting Communities to the Nation: Review of the Relationships between Local Communities and National Policy Systems

    The framework outlined reflects the realities of service delivery for the purposes of research and to assist practitioners to reflect on their policy context. The evidence indicates that service delivery remains predomin...

    Funded by: AHRC

    Lead research organisation: Durham University

    Why might this be relevant?

    The project discusses relationships between local communities and national policy systems, which may provide insights on citizen engagement but does not fully address the question.

  • Democratic renewal in Civil Society Organisations

    It is often argued Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) are central to a vibrant, democratic society. Charities, voluntary groups, community associations, and informal networks of like-minded individuals, are praised for b...

    Funded by: ESRC

    Lead research organisation: Nottingham Trent University

Similar ARIs from other organisations

UK governance and devolution How can we best understand and measure the relationships citizens have with different layers of UK governance? Cabinet Office, 2019
See details
Behavioural and social science How can local governance best be coordinated with national? Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, 2021
See details