Learning to Involve the Public in Public Policy

The second strand of development seeks to radically improve the degree of vertical integration between policy makers and the public within the learning community.

Communities are increasingly diverse in their interests and cultures of living. Public policy needs to become more responsive to the differences within communities.

Only by enabling the different communities to take part in a dialogue to shape the forming of public policy and its implementation can their specific needs be accommodated and the differences be reconciled.

The learning community is willing to learn that regeneration will be more effective, and lifelong learning more secure, when policy makers have the confidence to involve the public more actively in the making and renewing of their own communities.

This active citizenship is the key to revitalising local democracy. The participation it presupposes is not intended to replace the procedures of representation but to enhance them. A number of learning communities are beginning to experiment with strategies for enhancing democratic practice by listening to the "voice" of the public. These include creating, for example, forums; deliberative opinion polls; citizens' panels/juries; community councils.

• "Effective local democratic participation was a condition for the success of this regeneration programme."

• "What is needed is an acknowledgement that this is going to be a long-term process, and that it will take probably three years to set up structures which established community groups will recognise and trust."

• "Intelligent structures for enabling community regeneration do not insist upon uniformity to help the bureaucracies, but are transparent, accessible to local citizens, helping them to communicate their needs and claims."