5 things on the first ever Citizens’ Assembly in Kingston
By: Luke Piper
Tags: Local Government, Council, Environment, User Research, Air Pollution

What is a Citizens’ Assembly?

For two weekends over November and December residents of Kingston come together to listen to evidence from expert speakers and discuss what steps the council can take to improve air quality. The recommendations will then be reported to the council decision makers to decide what will happen next.

It was an intense weekend but here’s some of the key things I learned.

Recruiting residents

One of the main challenges when conducting user research is finding residents willing to give up their time. The Citizens’ Assembly provides an opportunity for residents to have a meaningful say in the future strategy for their Borough. A chance for them to express their views and be actively involved in the debate.

As an incentive, residents are given £150 per person for each weekend they are involved, as well as a free lunch and refreshments throughout the day. The incentive is paid in two installments — 1/2 after participation in the first weekend and the remainder if the resident completes the full four days.

An accurate reflection

To ensure the Assembly accurately reflects the demography of the Borough 7000 residents are randomly invited to take part. Of those who are interested 40 are selected to make up the Assembly and represent Kingston. This process is managed by the Sortition Foundation.

Facilitation

Residents are placed in small groups. Each group is stationed with a facilitator who supports the debate throughout the day. They will collect the thoughts and ideas and manage the discussion.

A facilitator is responsible for managing the group discussion and ensuring residents keep up with the information being presented to them. To do this they use a yellow and red card system.

Let me explain…

During the presentations if a resident is unsure about what is being explained a yellow card is raised which signals to the speaker to explain this particular point in more detail.

A red card indicates a resident has completely lost track of what the speaker is talking about. In this case the expert will repeat their points in another way.

Rapid learning

Each day residents work towards answering an aspect of the overarching question. To help them do this residents learn from subject experts. In this case academics, senior leaders and community residents.

Experts present the information and afterward residents are given time to discuss the content within their groups. Table facilitators summarise the key questions arising from the discussion and submit them to the speaker in a Q&A session afterwards.

At the end of each day the groups take part in an ideation session which encourages reflection on what they have learned throughout the day.

Air pollution is all around us

It was a weekend of intense focus and study. Speakers covered many aspects of air pollution and how it affects our health and environment. Evidence was thorough and balanced meaning residents could make considered decisions on how to tackle to problem.

Here’s some of the key facts that stood out across the weekend:

Over 2 million Londoners currently live in areas that exceed legal limits on air pollution.

Air quality is the second biggest cause of death, after smoking, in the UK each year.

Over 1/3 of all air pollution is caused by vehicles (road traffic).

The next steps

The final weekend in December is devoted to developing tangible policy recommendations. The outcome will then go to Kingston council for review.

Until then.