Participative draft open to public consultation

ResPublica is delighted to share its latest report, Civic Limits: How much more involved can people get?. This report seeks to provide some definition to this aspect of the big society debate by exploring the best available data on the state of civic life in Britain and describing what in practical terms is required to get more people involved.

The report sets out a raft of measures aimed at removing barriers to community participation, supporting better civic involvement, practice, innovation and encouraging companies to redesign their corporate social responsibility strategy to embrace the flagship policy.

Phillip Blond, Director of Respublica, says, “The Prime Minister’s bold and radical vision of creating the ‘Big Society’ has not been matched by the delivery of the policy. Communication mistakes have been particularly damaging allowing its’ opponents to ridicule the policy and say that it is just a cynical plan for cuts. This is wrong.”

Written by Richard Wilson, founder of Involve, and Matt Leach, Associate Director of ResPublica, this is an interim report launched as part of a three-month consultation process, with the intention of initiating a dynamic conversation about what to do, as opposed to stating static proposals. It is in that spirit we offer Civic Limits and its recommendations as a starting point. Therefore this is deliberately a first draft, a living text on which we invite input, contribution and comment. It is not perfect; there will be errors and omissions, but we hope that all players in civil society will engage in re-drafting our initial thoughts.