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Government officer rejects offer to help the public respond to consultation

Well, that was a bit of a blow.

As you know from my previous post the government (the Communities and Local Government Department) have published a response to the Rugg report which is also a consultation. In the past I have assisted the Law Commission, and also the Civil Justice Council, when they have been consulting landlords and property professionals regarding their proposals, by putting an answerform online to allow people to answer easily. I have generally had quite a good response to my answer forms and I know the Law Commission were grateful to receive comments from ordinary landlords who might not otherwise have responded (indeed they acknowledge this in their final report Law Com No 312 p17).

So this morning I rang up the number on the governments report, and asked to speak to the officer named. I then explained what I had done in the past and asked if his department would like to collaborate with me in providing something similar for their report. ?I?ll have to speak to my superior officer? he said. Just now the superior officer rang back.

I don?t know what sort of person she thought I was. "I don?t think it is something we would want to be associated with" she told me, her voice dripping with suspicion. I explained that I was a solicitor and that I had collaborated with the Law Commission doing this sort of thing in the past. "We do things differently from the Law Commission" she said, obviously thinking the worse of them for associating with pond life such as myself. "It is not a very long report, we would prefer people to respond to us direct".

I pointed out that for the ordinary person, sitting down to write a response to this sort of thing is rather intimidating, and they are much more likely to respond if things are made easy for them. This did not go down very well either. After pressing her a bit further she explained that they "would not wish to be seen to be endorsing me in any way". However when I asked her specifically whether they would reject any responses which were sent via an answer form set up by me, she said "of course not". They just do not want to have anything to do with it. Whether I put an answer form online is "up to me".

I have to say that I was rather left with the impression that she did not actually want many responses sent in to the consultation. But a government department would not have that sort of attitude would it??

Full post as published by The Landlord Law Blog on May 15, 2009 (boomark / email).