7. Engaging the public

Historically, public consultation in decision-making has consisted of informing and consulting people. Good practice, however, is to involve them much more actively.  Decision-making and active engagement by the community is termed public participation.  You may be familiar with Arnstein's (1969) "ladder of engagement", which describes basic forms of public consultation at the bottom, rising to full public participation at the top:

WWF (1999) summarises the ladder (from the bottom) as:

• "informing - telling participants about some decision which has already been taken (for example explaining the reasons for, or benefits of, something contentious or criticised);
• consulting - seeking participants' ideas or views as an input to some decision which the council will take;
• deciding together - sharing the decision with the community; giving the community some real power; and
• supporting community decisions - allowing the community to make the decision with the council at most providing advice or comment."

CAG (2000) summarise how public consultation and participation manifest themselves in SEA:

Appropriate stages for the involvement of (representatives of) the public could be:

• the scoping stage, when the choice of objectives, impacts/indicators, alternatives, and appraisal methodologies is made: this ensures that the public's key concerns are taken into account, and that an appropriate range of alternatives are considered;
• possibly during the collection of baseline information, to ensure that the often relatively broad-brush environmental description in the SEA does not miss out on any key data;
• the evaluation of impact significance and comparison of alternatives;
• preparation of the SEA report and decision-making, when the public's key concerns and values should be documented and taken into account; and
• post-decision to inform people of how and why the decision was taken, and how their concerns were taken into account.