Involvement Strategy 2025-27
3. Key Principles
As a Council, we will adopt the National Principles for Public Engagement in Wales and consider the principles when planning our engagement work.
National Principles for Public Engagement in Wales2
A set of ten principles agreed across public service organisations within the public and voluntary sectors in Wales aim to guide behaviour and encourage good quality, consistent engagement activity with service users and the general public. The principles are as follows:
1. Design your Engagement to make a difference: Engagement offers a genuine opportunity to inform or influence decisions, policy, or services.
2. Invite people to get involved, if they choose to: People have opportunities to engage as an individual or as part of a group or community, in an inclusive and welcoming way which does not put them under obligation or pressure.
3. Plan and deliver your engagement in a timely and appropriate way: The engagement process is clear, communicated to everyone in a way that’s easy to understand, takes place within a reasonable timescale, and uses the most suitable method(s) for those involved.
4. Work with relevant partner organisations: Organisations communicate with each other and work together wherever possible, to ensure that people’s time, and organisations’ resources, are used efficiently.
5. Provide jargon free, appropriate, and understandable information: People have easy access to relevant information that is tailored to meet their needs.
6. Make it easy for people to take part: Any barriers are identified and addressed, so that people can engage easily.
7. Ensure people benefit from the experience: Engagement contributes to developing the skills, knowledge, and confidence of all participants.
8. Ensure the right resources and time are in place for your engagement to be effective: Enough time is allowed for both planning and meaningful engagement for the decision, policy, or service design. Appropriate training, guidance, support, and financial resources enable all participants to engage effectively, including community participants and staff.
9. Let people know the impact of their contribution: Timely feedback is given to participants about their contribution, and the decisions or actions taken as a result, using methods and forms of feedback that take account of participants’ preferences.
10. Learn and share to improve your engagement: People’s experience of the engagement process is monitored, along with the accessibility, inclusion and diversity, and the outputs and results. Lessons learnt from the evaluation are shared and inform future engagement.
National Children and Young People’s Participation Standards3
The National Children and Young People’s Participation Standards are a tool to help measure the process of children and young people’s participation in the work of public services and how to increase the participation of children and young people in decision-making within organisations and services.
These are based on the provision of Article 12 of the United Nations Convenient on the Rights of the Child which state:
Children have the right to say what they think should happen when adults are making decision that affect them, and to have their opinions taken into account.
The Standards are also underpinned by the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. The Act puts involvement of children and young people, adults and communities at the heart of improving well-being, as well as being one of the five ways of working.
2 National-Principles-for-Public-Engagement-in-Wales.pdf