Citizens Panel
Background:
During 2000 to 2005 North Hertfordshire District Council had a Citizens Panel. A Citizens Panel is a database of residents who the council can call on when carrying out consultation exercise. The panel could be used for questionnaire based consultations or to recruit particpants for a focus group 
type exercise. During the five-year life cycle of the Citizens Panel, eight questionnaire based consultations were carried out as well as four focus group exercises. The Citizens Panel was owned by external consultants and was very well received by residents with response rates regularly above 70%. The Citizens Panel was disbanded in 2005 as it was no longer representative of the population of North Herts in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, disability status and geographic location.
The way forward:
As detailed above the original Citizens Panel was disbanded in 2005 as it was no longer representative of the district. Other factors in its disbandment included the cost implications of running a panel via an external consultant and not having direct ownership of the panel database. To maximise the effectiveness of a panel it is recommended that it is refreshed by a third each year to avoid 'conditioning'. Due to financial constraints this proved difficult during the life-cycle of the original panel.
To combat all of these factors and to once again have a successful panel at NHDC, a Citizens Panel is now recruited every two years as part of the District Wide Survey consultation exercise. The benefits of recuiting a panel as part of the District Wide Survey process are highlited below:
- The District Wide Survey is carried out using a face to face methodology. By recruiting a Citizens Panel as part of this process, the council can set quotas in terms of age,gender, ethnicity and disability which will ensure that the panel recruited is representative of the district and mirrors the population breakdown of the 2001 census.
- As the District Wide Survey is carried out every two years there is no need to refresh the panel annually but to simply recruit a new panel as part of each District Wide Survey exercise.
- By recruiting the panel in this way, the council can ensure that it has ownership of the panel database which would allow the council to run internal consultations using the panel without the need to use external consultants.
Further information:
As part of the 2008 District Wide Survey, the council recruited its new Citizens Panel. This panel will be used on an adhoc basis to support the consultation programme at NHDC until 2010. The key findings and actions from recent Citizens Panel exercises can be viewed on the Consultation Updates section of the website. Here you will find the key finding reports for the two Citizens Panels carried out with the Panel that was recruited as part of the 2006 District Wide Survey.
