Leonie Roberts outlines the importance of effective community engagement.
It’ll be a sad day when genuinely collaborative community engagement becomes a case of ‘managing expectations’ – but has it already happened?
Orlo describes community engagement as ‘building strong relationships, fostering meaningful connections, and involving diverse stakeholders in decision-making processes.’
Community engagement leads activities ‘from inclusive dialogue and consultation to collective action and co-creation.’
That’s a lot of ‘cos.’
By actively involving groups who care about the outcome, collectively addressing mutual concerns, and creating solutions together that meet shared goals, community engagement becomes an effective partnership which delivers on business and social objectives.
That way of working makes a lot of sense.
That’s what I sought to achieve as lead press officer to the Welsh Government Minister for Social Justice (then the Deputy Minister and Chief Whip) in 2020-21. I interviewed and spoke to individuals who were knowledgeable about race equality issues in Wales, and helped to make sure the policies rolled out were effective and took account of their views.
Surely that’s the point of community engagement: taking time to listen and understand, then working together to find solutions that achieve the best results for everyone.
I used the relationships I built, and what I learned, to help inform policy advisers about attitudes and responses to systemic racism and bias which could affect Wales. The decisions weren’t mine, but the process of community engagement was effective.
It was a great way to understand the genuine concerns felt by ethnic minority communities. It provided a platform to use insights to build a plan to minimise issues and guide thinking before the Welsh Government’s Race Equality Action Plan was rolled out to the media and the Welsh population.
Co-design, co-production, co-creation, and community engagement are all about working ‘with’ a group, rather than doing something ‘to’ them. The clue’s in the name: co = with.
A LinkedIn post last week from a non-profit consultant suggested that ‘slapping’ a ‘co’ in front of ‘co-design, co-analysis, co-production, co-everything… doesn’t make it more inclusive or impactful. It can sometimes just make the process woollier…’
I understand that the poster’s intention might have been to question individual methods of ‘co-creation,’ and to emphasise that community engagement mustn’t be a performative exercise.
But I disagree profoundly with any suggestion that community engagement is not a valuable and vital stage in inclusive, equitable, and effective decision making.
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As a matter of principle, involving people in solving the challenges that affect them has to be a non-negotiable part of building trust and encouraging communities to take an active role in change for the better.
It needs to be a thoughtful, intentional process based on asking the right questions of the right people, listening attentively, and letting responses guide the starting point for planning.
Communities and their views matter.
I understand that building relationships with people and encouraging them to actively engage with the process can be slow and frustrating. But community engagement only works when people trust the process, and believe that someone’s listening.
When communities actively share concerns in good faith, and those concerns are ignored, why would they be willing to reconvene in the process, or offer their thoughts in future?
The glitch in the system lies with the public sector body that initiated ‘community engagement’ under false pretences, with no intention of using the insights gained.
I went to two events recently which displayed contrasting views on community engagement.
One was a social hackathon ideas-creation day run by the Start Something Good team (who very recently won the Industry to Industry award from the Institute for Collaborative Working).
The event was designed to generate a range of ideas to encourage people to appreciate and enjoy their local community and heritage.
I hope very much that the Welsh public sector will embrace the huge benefits of genuine community engagement, and that third sector expertise will be included as part of the best practice framework going forward.
The organisers built trust and positive connections between attendees to understand the issue from varying viewpoints and skill sets, and then kickstarted an effective process to generate ideas. The focus was on collaborative working, resulting in a bundle of fresh ideas to put into action.
Paul Stepczak from the Start Something Good team said:
‘Community engagement isn’t the soft bit before delivery, it is THE work. It’s slow, human, and sometimes uncomfortable. But when people start to trust the process, everything else moves further and faster than any deadline could force.’
Surely that’s the point of community engagement: taking time to listen and understand, then working together to find solutions that achieve the best results for everyone.
If you shut people out of the conversation, all you achieve is frustrated individuals who feel ignored. If you don’t listen, all you get is communities who know that the solutions proposed don’t take account of their concerns, or meet their needs. And that’s when you end up with unhappy people who don’t want to accept the changes that are being forced on them.
The second event I attended was more closely aligned to that end of the scale.
It was a meeting to discuss best practice for community engagement in Wales. It sounded great on the surface, and I was looking forward to getting involved – but I was concerned to see that there wasn’t a single representative of the third sector present.
There’s a movement in Wales for the public and third sectors to work together to tackle social issues, but I don’t believe it’s being implemented universally.
A June 2025 response from the Wales Council for Voluntary Action (WCVA) looked at the impact of Wales’s landmark Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, 10 years on. The report pointed out that the third sector is ‘more nimble and better able to engage with communities and individuals than public bodies,’ but pointed out that genuine collaboration still isn’t happening.
The WCVA response continued: ‘Failure to trust and value the voluntary sector means we struggle to amplify the voices of those at grassroots level,’ and called for ‘a co-produced communities policy.’
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I believe that the meeting I attended may be the foundation for that co-produced communities policy – but if so, why were no third sector representatives present?
I’m also prepared to believe that the genuine intention is to develop a rounded, effective policy based on the principle of ‘you said, we did,’ but I (and several private sector representatives who were there) commented that the framework can’t go any further without third sector partners.
Worryingly, one public sector leader at the meeting stated that the community engagement process, at least for smaller scale projects, was likely to be limited to ‘managing expectations.’
Collaboration is one of the essential Five Ways of Working listed within the 2015 Act.
It’s non-negotiable – but that statement doesn’t sound much like a genuine attempt at collaboration to me.
WCVA’s report quotes a voluntary sector representative’s frustration at public bodies for ‘disrespecting community input’ – which rings true alongside the ‘managing expectations’ line I heard.
I hope very much that the Welsh public sector will embrace the huge benefits of genuine community engagement, and that third sector expertise will be included as part of the best practice framework going forward.
It’s true that trust takes time to build, and that partnership activity can be more complicated than unilateral action, but the benefits of effective community engagement are priceless, and collaboration must not be reduced to a tick-box exercise or ‘managing expectations.’
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