Citizens' Juries

Bristol is currently one year into a dramatic programme of change to the way that residential waste is collected, specifically the introduction of biweekly collection of general waste, with weekly collection of householder-sorted organic, paper and metal waste.

I've got some issues with the rationale for recycling in this fashion, particularly the implicit coercion of the Bristolian taxpayer to meet arbitrary European targets and the public health implications of reduced collection times for rubbish in areas with narrow streets and high levels of multiple occupancy. But that's a matter for a future post; today I'm interested in discussing an element of the legislative process relevant to Bristol's approach to waste management - the use of a Citizens' Jury.

At the meeting of the Full Council on 4th December, a key agenda item was the report from the Overview and Scrutiny Management committee, detailing the findings of the Bristol Citizens' Jury on Waste Management .

This report contains a series of recommendations from the Jury, and is to all intents and purposes an exercise in legislative scrutiny. Indeed, in the subsequent meeting of the City Executive Agenda Item 4A1 is:

"[t]o support the action plan set out in annex 1 of the report, which reflects the key recommendations of the Citizens' Jury for Waste".

The financial implications of this are £300,000 additional spending next year, and another £70,000 a year beyond that. Not huge numbers compared to the council overall annual budget of £303 million, but not peanuts either. That's not including the £45,000 to run the jury either.

Now my party colleagues in the Conservative Group of the council have taken an active part in this process - John Goulandris as Chair of the OSM committee, and Richard Eddy as Chair of the Quality of Life Scrutiny committee. But I'm concerned that the Jury process is misleading us all. I suspect that it removes the impetus for oversight of Council policy by the opposition party, and it creates an illusion of impartiality and "judicial" deliberation when it's really just a rubber stamp on existing policy - i.e. it ain't a Jury. As another UK user of Citizens' Juries comments on their website :

"[It c]an be difficult to 'reject' the Jury's recommendations"

In our city, a Citizens' Jury is constructed as an off-shoot of the Citizens' Panel ("Bristol's Biggest Think Tank") which consists of two thousand local residents, some randomly selected, some self-selected. If you like, you can apply to join the Citizens' Panel, for which you will be asked your ethnicity, sexual orientation and whether you consider yourself to be transgendered, but not whether you are a council tax payer in Bristol.

The Citizens' Panel is a means of gathering information on public perception of the quality of council services, and I won't dispute that as a means of getting feedback it's probably quite effective. I'm slightly more sceptical of some of the other aspirations for the Panel -

"[to contribute] to democratic renewal and [to encourage] participation in democratic processes"

I thought that was achieved by voting, and doesn't seem to be compatible with the stated utility of the panel "as a vehicle for developing public relations". You can petition the electorate, or persuade the electorate. Doing both at exactly the same time seems a tricky proposition.

A Jury can be commissioned by any department or standing committee. For example the first - a Jury on Swimming Pools - was paid for by the old Department of Environment, Tranport and Leisure. In the Bristolian system, half the jurors are recruited from the existing membership of the Citizens' Panel, and the other half by on-street recruitment.

The on-street recruitment questionnaire (Appendix 5 of the latest Jury's report) is less intrusive than that of the Citizens' Panel, but also fails to check whether the respondent is a Bristol Council Tax payer. It also mispells "Cotham" as "Cotam", and indicates that Cabot is a ward in both Central West and Central East Bristol, but I suppose that's to be expected from a London-based market research firm .

Having gathered a jury which represents "a cross-section of the community" - with the unspoken caveat that it's a cross section of the community who can afford to take two days off work for pseudo Jury-duty - the Jurors are then asked to consider a question, cross-examine "witnesses" and produce "recommendations". The recommendations are then presented to the commissioning body.

But hold on a minute - this is essentially what Councillors are supposed to do isn't it? Scrutiny of legislation and local service provision? Well let's look at the originators of the Citizens' Jury concept (and owners of the US trademark) - what do they have to say?

Democracy is based on the idea that elected officials and public agencies carry out the will of the people. But the manipulative nature of our election campaigns and the great power of lobbyists make it doubtful that government policy is based upon the wishes of a well-informed and engaged public. Public opinion polls can tell what people quickly think in response to telephoned survey questions. The actual "will of the people" may be something quite different.

Let me have a go at translating that: The people (that's you and me) don't know what we want if you ask us, and we're easily swayed by slick election campaigns. In fact we need someone else to tell us what we really need.

The Citizens Jury is not a new concept - it has become popular in the UK due to support from the Institute for Public Policy Research - the Labour party's primary think tank - but the concept was derived from the early-seventies research of Ned Crosby; work now promoted through the Jefferson Centre. Similar strains of thinking are evident in the overarching concept of Public Action Research, which has its roots in social theory and postmodernism.

I'll declare a political bias here - most of the organisations and academics promoting these concepts have a collectivist view of the world, which makes me immediately suspicious of their motives. I've edited this post a few times, and I hope my underlying scepticism of the politicised origins of Citizens' Juries is balanced by an objective view of the implementation of the process in Bristol. The Bristolian definition of a Citizens' Jury is:

"a deliberative consultation process designed to gain a public perspective on controversial and/or complex subjects. Citizens’ juries move beyond tapping into the views of individuals based on the information and opinions they currently hold. Juries provide a process designed to give Jurors the time needed to learn about an issue, through written materials and witness presentations and to question witnesses and debate with fellow Jurors. By this means, Jurors develop a more considered view, taking into account a range of perspectives, some of which may be conflicting."

Well this sounds a bit less like a PR exercise, so maybe I'm tilting at windmills. What about the key principles of a Bristol Citizens' Jury?:

• The jurors are recruited to be a cross-section of the community: the Jury is said to ‘reflect’ the local population, rather than to ‘represent’ it;
• There is sufficient time for questioning, deliberation and scrutiny of evidence to enable complex issues to be considered and to get beyond an initial ‘knee-jerk’ reaction;
• All viewpoints are given consideration with the evidence and information presented being balanced as far as possible;
• The jury is not a decision-making body but policy makers are expected to take the jury’s recommendations seriously and to provide a response to jurors;
• The role of the facilitators is to enable the jury to complete its task, not to lead the discussion in any particular direction.

Now I get worried again. Why the difference between "reflecting" and "representing" the local population; when is a reaction "knee-jerk"; how does one judge whether evidence in "balanced"? What constitutes a "serious" response?

Citizens’ Juries are usually framed around a single question, which may be broken into sub-questions that guide the design of the agenda. The final aim may be to make recommendations, or to identify priorities or to define actions. Regardless of the specific aim, at the end of the Jury, the output should be subscribed to by all Jurors and the commissioning organisation should have in place a process by which the output can inform policy or decision-making in the relevant area.

The question for this exercise was:

‘What next for [domestic] waste in Bristol?’

This question was split into four sub-issues:

• Service development, including quality improvement and possible new services
• Promotion of recycling, including education, marketing and information
• Enforcement
• Charging

The overall question and the split were agreed by the commissioning body (The Overview and Scrutiny Management committee). Observe how the matter under scrutiny by the Jury is very narrowly defined, despite the superficially open scope of the question. And:

[1] Jurors were also asked to focus on the waste hierarchy – reduce, reuse and recycle – rather than on waste management and disposal.

Let me direct your attention back up the page a bit to the key principles:

[2] The role of the facilitators is to enable the jury to complete its task, not to lead the discussion in any particular direction.

Compare and contrast [1] and [2]. Seems to be a bit of a fundamental conflict there. In fact, one would go so far as to say that a clever facilitator could get whatever answer they wanted.

Over the following two and a half days, Jurors addressed the four main sub-issues. By means of briefing notes, witness presentations, question and answer sessions, dialogue and deliberation, the Jury acquired considerable insight into the importance of addressing waste and recycling rates. Some initial suggestions and priorities – for example, around the kerbside collection of plastic waste for recycling – were amended in the light of information on costs and other ideas were elaborated and developed – for example, those around information and promotion of recycling.

But given that the "witnesses" are open to be cross-examined, the jurors will spot manipulation, surely?

Julian Parfitt, Head of Research, ECT Group

The current focus on recycling was, he said, driven primarily by concerns overclimate change.

John Downer, Jacobs UK Ltd.

He presented a series of graphs showing the CO2 and
methane emissions associated with different systems and the impact on global warming.

Steve Moore, Head of Environmental Services, Bristol City Council

Steve’s presentation looked first at the Landfill Directive 1999 and outlined the Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme. [...]

Steve also introduced the waste hierarchy, a concept referred to throughout the Jury. This opened the discussion up to include individual’s responsibility to reduce the amount of waste produced and the value of re-using, rather than recycling, items with life in them.

Julie Merry, Steve Bell & Julie Nixon, SITA

Julie looked to the future of waste management, suggesting that the next major change in UK waste disposal could be the introduction of Pay as You Throw (PAYT) programmes, where recycling is free, but refuse collection is paid for. SITA already runs a number of PAYT programmes in Europe.

Jenny Robinson, ROTATE Advisor, Waste and Resource Action Programme (WRAP)

Jenny then outlined the three most important factors in generating a scheme: sustainability, quality and deliverability. Developing a sustainable service involves considering potential efficiencies such as using. better vehicles and reviewing collections. Legislation must also be taken into account – especially future-proofing. The environment is, obviously, also key in sustainability, and all schemes should therefore take into account their effect on the environment.

Ian James, ECT Recycling

ECT’s current annual turnover exceeds £50 million. ECT Recycling has worked in partnership with Bristol City Council since its first arrival in Bristol. It has helped to increase the tonnage of collected dry recyclables to current levels, growing the operation from 23 collection crews to 35 collection crews per day.

Ben Jennings , Devon County Council

Ben runs Devon’s promotional recycling work.

Jane Stephenson, Resources Futures

Resource Futures is contracted by Bristol Council to run work with schools, carry out a door-stepping campaign and do work around recyclable nappies. [..]

Jane then referred to national press on report that disposable were more beneficial than washable. She said this research made some arguable assumptions, such as that disposable nappies are washed at a high temperature, they’re tumble-dried and ironed.

Aled Williams , Streetscene Enforcement Team, Bristol City Council

In Aled’s view it is essential that there has recently been a change in focus, from cleaning up after offenders (at a huge cost to the tax payer), to investing in tackling the perpetrators, thus preventing the problem in the first place.

Julian Williams, SOFA Project

‘I’m not a civil servant or a local authority officer, I run a social enterprise, a local charitable business in Bristol. We’ve been around for about 20 years. I want to talk about the waste hierarchy – is that something you’ve already heard about?

Zoe Hardman[or possibly Goodman], Bristol City Council, ‘How to meet recycling and landfill diversion targets without bankrupting the Council’

She noted that costs to local government of waste, from landfill taxes in particular, were increasing.

Zoe looked first at customer satisfaction. She said that satisfaction with recycling had increased. A national survey was done every 3 years. Satisfaction came down quite severely when they introduced the extended weekly recycling alongside two-weekly residual waste collections and asked the Jury to think about what could be done now to increase satisfaction again[.]

Remember the official question being considered by the jury - ‘What next for [domestic] waste in Bristol?’ It would perhaps be better phrased as:

Given that Landfill Tax is going to bankrupt us, and we've already committed huge amounts of time and effort to a recycling-oriented waste management programme including some very frightening commercial contracts with proper companies who can hire smarter lawyers, and given that we don't have to account for the time that taxpayers spend sorting their own rubbish, and given that we have a monopoly on waste collection anyway, what next for domestic waste in Bristol?

The whole terminology of "jury" and "witnesses" is misleading, as this is not really an antagonistic process. There is no judge, no prosecution or defence, but rather an agenda to be agreed. In fact the use of the trapping of a proper jury are just theatre to mask the manipulative nature of the exercise.

Has the exercise produced anything of value? Well, if you're poltically minded to increase recycling by any means, or you derive your income from this approach to waste mangement, then yes. But has it been anything other than a rubber stamp on policy and a method to stifle debate? Answers on a a postcard.