BANES consultations designed to disappoint?

We have commented before on the generally poor quality of BANES consultation processes.

Three recent examples have added to our concerns:

The Parking Strategy was based on what was finally a very good consultation process after a very poor initial effort and raised expectations that the parking strategy would be a comprehensive attempt to address the very many issues in this area. The outcome was disappointing as the resulting strategy largely ignored all the more difficult and contentious issues raised and focussed on a minor rearrangement of charging policy.

With the coach strategy there was a fair attempt at consulting although it seems to use a very limited sample of consultees but again the results are very disappointing and mainly focussed on issues raised by coach operators with little or no attempt to engage with more difficult issues such as pollution, enforcement and controlling coach cruising around key heritage sites that bring no economic benefit to the city or the relationship with other plans such as the destination strategy.

The library/one stop shop consultation which after a very poor start, which disappointed almost all stakeholder and led to some questionable decisions being made, now seems intent on setting the future project up to disappoint further. Consultees are being invited to make any proposal they like and being led to believe that all proposal have an equal chance of being considered for inclusion in the final project. This cannot be the case. Several proposals are not compatible and represent completely different vision of the role of libraries in the community. All proposal will have to fit in the existing space as the is little room for expansion at the Podium and the architects have already, in our view unwisely, committed to retain the same number of books available for browsing. It will also be the case that all proposals will have to fit within what is unlikely to be a generous budget.