The conversation before the consultation

Over the past few months, I’ve been speaking with communities and community groups in different regions. And the same message keeps coming through, people feel they are being brought into projects too late. By the time engagement begins, the shape of the project is often already set. People can sense that straight away. That’s not necessarily because anyone is acting in bad faith. But it does mean the community interface is compromised from the start.

People still show up. At the same time, they’ll tell you they feel over consulted and under listened to, and they often cannot see how their input was used. It’s rarely one project on its own. It’s the combined effect of being asked again and again by different organisations and teams, sometimes on overlapping issues, with very little visibility on what changed as a result.

Most of us would agree we should involve community earlier, but the hard part is working out what that actually looks like. It’s not just a matter of starting consultation sooner. It means creating space before the project and process are fully locked in. It means working with people to clarify what the real question is, what information is needed, what options are in play, and who needs to be involved.

That early work is difficult. It doesn’t fit neatly into a typical project timeline, and it’s hard to fund and hard to explain, because you cannot always point to a neat outcome at the time. Communities also need support to do it well. It can be unfair to ask people for views without enabling them to understand the issue properly and make sense of the information that matters.

When this early work is missing, later engagement inherits the problem. Pushback becomes less about a single option and more about fairness, inclusion, and whether the process was set up in a way that made genuine input possible.

This is one reason Watertrust has been paying close attention to early-stage work and to fairness. These shape what is possible later, even though it is often invisible in the moment. Watertrust’s independence helps in this space. It gives us room to stay with the question while it is still being shaped, and to have the conversations that help define what a fair process would need to include.

Developing a method for making this happen, regardless, of the issue is challenging.

Want to know more? Call Chris: 0429 990 604

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