Consultation

Consultation methods

The Corporate consultation team offers the following services

• Provision of support and practical guidance to all Resources on surveys, consultation events, and consultation projects, including project definition and analysis of outputs
• Management of the People's Panel programme, including the use of focus groups, with regular outputs including surveys and analysis of consultation on issues such as service satisfaction, service development, and the council's budget
• Maintenance and management of the council’s consultation database and surveys undertaken by Resources/services in the council. This service is available to all Resources which may be contemplating research that would involve customer and/or citizen consultation.

Before undertaking your consultation, please read our consultation toolkit

If you're undertaking a consultation in relation to a policy or procedure that is likely to have an impact on people, you may have to carry out an equality impact assessment and/or a Fairer Scotland assessment. 

The short answer to that is yes! We understand there are occasions where you’ve been asked to create a short survey on free web-based packages such as survey monkey or google/microsoft forms. These are basic and are in a lot of cases incompatible with users' devices or networks. More importantly, the data storage isn't guaranteed to be secure as the information is held on non-UK servers. We know that you might be looking for a quick turnaround of a survey however we wouldn't recommend and cannot support these methods. The software that we use coupled with our expertise creates high quality questionnaires that add value to your consultation and are within corporate standards. 

Our hardware and timescales: Please give us 15 calendar days for the use of any of our hardware to avoid disappointment.

We use the SNAP survey software suite, which makes sure that the survey data we collect is protected in accordance with ISO 27001:2013 Information Security Management System and complies with Data Protection and UK GDPR regulations.

OptionFinder voting system – This is an add-on to microsoft powerpoint and bears a similarity to the game show ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’. This is used for events to gather information from the attendees and helps keep your audience focussed throughout the event. The OptionFinder software is built into the consultation team's laptops which means you cannot use your own laptop. 

Ketso tool kit – This is a repositionable felt based kit used in workshops. The Ketso system has been designed to make running your workshops flexible and straightforward. We have four full kits and one mini kit. A Ketso kit provides a set of tabletop materials that can be used to capture and display people’s ideas, enables all participant’s views to be expressed and stimulates both individual and group thinking.

Ketso is a colourful, hands on and re-usable toolkit for creative engagement. It enables people with different levels of confidence and ability to engage and share ideas. More information on how the toolkit can benefit you in your workshop or engagement event is available from the Ketso website. At the end of your workshop, we ask you to make sure the kit is cleaned and returned to us in the same condition you received it. 

The People’s Panel - South Lanarkshire People's Panel is a panel of around 800 residents who have registered as willing to take part in consultation activity with the council. Panel members can be invited to participate in any consultations. As many of the panel members have given us their email addresses, we can easily share links to online surveys. For dedicated panel surveys, panel members can also participate in focus and discussion groups.  

Job requests

All consultation and toolkit requests must be booked in advance and agreed with the consultation team. Timescales have been provided throughout this guide and we ask you to consider these a minimum requirement. Please provide as much notice as you can so that your request can be met.

All consultation requests, without exception, must be booked in to the consultation team by using the online snap survey job request.

Once the form has been completed, a word document of your introduction to the survey and the questions you want to ask should be sent to consultation@southlanarkshire.gov.uk (this should be as detailed as possible about what you want the questions to provide you with, this must include all information you wish to gather. If you require personal details from respondents there must be questions to ask as all snap surveys are anonymous. The estimated timescale for a consultation is 15 calendar days' notice.

The online form has been designed to ensure consistency, and to ensure all bookings have the appropriate information for the job. It's important that all the information on the form is accurate as the information you provide will be uploaded directly to the consultation database.