Havering Council Set To Launch First Ever Citizen Panel.

Havering Council has announced plans to launch the borough’s first ever Citizen Panel later this year, giving residents a stronger voice in decision-making and how services are delivered.

The Council is looking to recruit up to 1,000 residents to take part, creating a diverse group that reflects communities across the borough. This includes a mix of ages, backgrounds, and locations to ensure a broad range of views are heard.

From this larger group, smaller focus panels will be formed to provide more detailed feedback on specific issues, services and future plans.

Recruitment will be carried out through a combination of open invitations and targeted outreach, with a focus on ensuring fair and balanced representation.

Members of the panel will be invited to take part in several engagement sessions each year, both in person and online. Each session will focus on key topics, service areas or emerging issues where resident input is needed.

The Council says all sessions will be fully accessible, with support available for those who need it, including translated materials, alternative formats and help with digital access.

The aim is to involve residents earlier in shaping decisions, reach voices that are often underrepresented, and build stronger trust between the Council and the community.

The panel is also expected to reduce consultation fatigue by making engagement more focused and meaningful, while allowing the Council to respond more quickly to emerging issues.

In the long term, the approach is designed to improve transparency, strengthen decision-making, and reduce costs by cutting down on repeated consultations and external research.

Deputy Leader of Havering Council, Gillian Ford, said:
“We have listened to residents who want to have more of a say in decision-making and how services are run.
In our engagement strategy launched in 2024, we said that we will look at launching a Citizen Panel, which will do just that.
These are used by other local authorities quite effectively and help ensure that residents can get more involved, challenge and help shape what we do.
We will look at starting recruitment for this panel later in the summer and early autumn.”

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