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Chapter 2: The Consultation Process
Timing of Consultation
The consultation became "live" on 17 June 2005 and with a formal closing date of 9 September 2005 although responses received up to the beginning of October 2005 have been included in the analysis. The scale of the consultation was wide in terms of distribution to stakeholders but modest in terms of the volume of responses received. Staff in the Access to Justice Division of the Scottish Executive's Justice Department supported the exercise.
Nature of Consultation
The consultation document comprised 30 pages (excluding Annexes). The document summarised recent, current and proposed changes to publicly funded legal assistance in Scotland. It dealt separately with civil and criminal matters and, for each, set out a vision for the future and made specific proposals for change. Proposals for change were divided into those intended for the short to medium term and those for the longer term.
The consultation document invited comments on the range of proposals, posing 40 questions as a framework for respondents' replies 6. Several of these were divided further into parts, resulting in a relatively large number of issues on which views were requested.
Distribution and Advertising of Consultation Document
As outlined previously, the consultation was distributed in hard copy to over 300 interested organisations and professional individuals and publicised in a variety of ways including national websites, a press release, Ministerial statement, debate in Parliament and several face-to-face events and seminars. The views of members of the public were invited via a series of focus groups and the findings from these form the basis of a separate report.
Nature of Responses
The structure of the consultation document provided an important steer in promoting some consistency in form of response. Most respondents used the 40 question framework to structure their respective responses, submitting these either electronically or in hard copy. Other respondents selected certain topics to respond to with several focusing on the topics relating to civil matters only. Where respondents elected to submit responses which did not follow the response structure suggested in the consultation document, submissions ranged from a few paragraphs to relatively long arguments, documented over several pages.
All responses were from professional bodies, organisations and individuals with none submitted by members of the public.
Who were the Respondents?
The list of organisations that responded is documented at Annex 2. Respondents could be grouped into broad categories as shown in Table 1.
Table 1: Respondents by Category
Respondent Category | No. | % of total |
|---|
Legal Bodies | 22 | 34 |
|---|
Voluntary Sector Organisations | 20 | 31 |
|---|
Local Authorities | 15 | 23 |
|---|
Professional Individuals | 5 | 8 |
|---|
Other | 3 | 5 |
|---|
Total | 65 | 100 |
|---|
NB Percentages may not total 100% exactly due to rounding
Legal bodies comprised the largest respondent sector (34%) but voluntary sector organisations (31%) and local authorities (23%) respectively also contributed significant proportions of the overall submissions.
Naming Respondents
The convention adopted for this consultation has been to preserve anonymity of individual respondents and organisations, by attributing their comments and quotes to the grouped respondent category to which they fit. In this way, individual requests for anonymity are met, but a further depth is added to the analysis by providing some contextual information about the respondent type. The terms used to describe the different category of respondent are as follows:
Leg | (Legal Body) |
Vol | (Voluntary Sector Organisation) |
LA | (Local Authority) |
Indiv | (Professional Individual) |
Oth | (Other) |
Gaps in Respondent Type
Despite the modest number of responses to the consultation, the relatively even spread of submissions across 3 key respondent sectors demonstrates a broad balance in the positioning and perspective of respondents to the consultation. However, a comparison of respondents with those initially invited to participate in the written consultation suggests that, perhaps, respondents representing Sheriff Courts could be identified as one gap in the process.
Compared with other written consultations, it was of note that the current exercise attracted a significant volume of responses from representative equality bodies, demonstrating the importance of the issues in the lives of many of the people they represent.
Approach to Analysis
A comprehensive electronic framework for identifying and recording relevant comments from respondents was developed and a number of ground-rules established to ensure responses were prepared for analysis in a consistent and sensible fashion.
Analytical Framework
An electronic Excel database was used to store and assist analysis of the responses. This database enabled the storage of either free text or numerical data in a systematic manner whilst providing the flexibility for framework amendments should these be required as the work progressed.
The fields used to record the material were based on the questions set out in the consultation document and were designed to accommodate both yes/no responses and more detailed commentary. Once responses had been examined, a small number of additional fields were added to accommodate the further themes which arose. The result was a comprehensive list of fields which formed the headings for the consultation database of responses.
Ground-Rules
Separate Responses from the Same Individual/Organisation
On occasions, one respondent may send in more than one response. This can occur, for example, when they have further thoughts on the issue and wish to make more comment. In other instances, the respondent may have simply forgotten to enclose some evidence in their first reply and they contact the Review team again with more information. On occasions, a respondent may send the same response in both electronic and hard forms.
Both the Scottish Executive consultation team and the research team were alert to the possibilities of such double entries. Any identical responses were picked up by hand searching or electronic screening and removed from the exercise.
Quantitative Material
Much of the analysis was based on descriptive free text, but scope also existed for quantitative analysis. Such data usually involved approximate counts of the numbers of respondents who commented on particular topics and, within these groups, the numbers of respondents holding particular views. However, because of the open nature of the consultation, which did not require people to provide a response on every issue, the approach of many consultees in providing more general comments rather than responding to each question posed, and the way that respondents could "opt in" to their chosen response topics, quantification of responses was not appropriate in all instances and should be treated as simply indicative and illustrative rather than absolute.
In addition, it should be noted that for some issues the number of respondents was relatively low, and although percentages of those holding certain views have been calculated for the purposes of the analysis, the figures should be interpreted within this context of overall low respondent numbers.
Finally, it is stressed that any statistics quoted here cannot be extrapolated to a wider population outwith the consultation population.
Factual Accuracy
The views presented in this analysis have not been vetted in any way for factual accuracy. The opinions and comments submitted to the consultation may be based on fact or may, indeed, be based on what respondents perceive to be accurate from their perspective, but which others may interpret differently. It is important for the analysis to represent views from all perspectives. The report may, therefore, contain analysis of responses which may be factually inaccurate, but are objective in terms of their reflection of strongly held perceptions.
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