Going forward

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After the outcome improvement process 

This guide helps you to think about the next steps to take, whether your participation request has led to an outcome you are satisfied with, or not.

Building on success 

If you are happy with how things have gone and what was achieved, in addition to having a well-earned rest, you may want to start thinking about how to build on your success.

Here are some ideas for how to do this:

  • Keep the momentum going by continuing to work on any actions you agreed to deliver as part of the outcome improvement process.

  • Write up your experience so that if your group membership changes, future members will have the information they need about what happened in the PR process and anything your group agreed to do.

  • Share your positive experience, so that other community groups can learn from, and be inspired, by it. You could use social media or even get in touch with us at Scottish Community Development Centre. We’re always keen to help share learning.

  • Check in with the public body to see if they have produced, or intend to produce, the report on the process. This will help to make sure that important lessons are written down and lead to changes in how things are done in future. If the process of working together was a good one, it would be a shame if things went back to how they were before you made the participation request, e.g., poor communication, lack of engagement etc.

What if things haven’t gone well? 

We’re talking about the real world here. Working together to improve things is challenging for a lot of different reasons, and in many cases a participation request will not result in the change you hoped it would. 

Broadly speaking, there are two main ways that a participation request may result in disappointment, even though it was initially agreed to by the public body. These are: 

  • That it didn’t lead to a good outcome improvement process. If you aren’t involved in a meaningful and well-planned discussion about how to improve things, then it is much less likely that the participation request will lead to a positive change in how the service is designed or delivered.  

  • That despite having been involved in what seemed like a good process, you still feel that the public body has made the wrong decision at the end of it. 

Both of these things will be very frustrating, and it may be hard for your group to see any positive way forward using the legislation. It is true that the Community Empowerment Act doesn’t say anything about what steps to take in these circumstances. There is (currently) no appeals mechanism and there is no overseeing organisation for ensuring public bodies stick to the legislation. 

However, it should still be worth doing the following: 

  • Checking that the public body has produced, or is producing, a report on the process (see above). This report should show how the process worked and how the outcome has been improved. The public body is required to produce this report, and also to have involved your group while writing it.  

A properly written report should show the different views that were given during the process, how these were considered and how a decision was reached based on this. Having all this written down formally will help you to highlight what went wrong, which should help you going forward.  

  • It might be worth looking back at the decision notice (the letter or email agreeing to your participation request) and/or any working agreement you made with the public body at the start of the process. This could help you to identify what was, and wasn’t, supposed to happen. You would then be in a better position to make a case to the public body as to why they need to revisit the process or decision. 

  • You should also think about what other options are available. To help with this, you could return to the some of the earlier guides in this resource pack, including Setting the Scene and Approaching Public Bodies.

Formal steps you can take

Although there is no right to review or appeal within the Participation Request process, there are existing rights to complain to and about public bodies.  If a community participation body feels that a public service authority has not done what the Act or the Regulations say it should, then they have the right to:

Complain directly to the public body. This should always be the first action as it gives the public body the chance to fix or improve anything it has got wrong or failed to do.  Even if the public body feels it has followed the legislation, it gives them a chance to consider whether there’s something else they can do to work with the community body.  The Scottish Public Service Ombudsman has some useful information on making a complaint to a public body, although it is also important to check the organisation’s process direct, because there can be some differences.

Complain to the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman.  The Ombudsman is the final stage of the public sector complaints process and deals with complaints about a range of public sector bodies. Their video on how to complain about a public body explains what they do and what information they will need from you.

Take legal action in certain circumstances. The Scottish Parliament website states that “Judicial review is the court process by which a judge reviews a decision, an action or a failure to act by a public body or other decision maker. Judicial review is only available where other effective remedies have been exhausted and where there is a legally recognised ground of challenge.”  This is a legal process and will require legal support.  You can find out more about judicial reviews on the Scottish Parliament  or JustRight Scotland’s websites.