The Consultation Mark
Setting the Standard for Excellence
The Consultation Mark is a recognised benchmark for high quality, effective, and transparent consultation. The Centre for Consultation provides independent, experienced judgement, informed by co-designed national standards, professional practice and real world delivery. You get confidence in complying with best practice and demonstrating your commitment to meaningful consultation.
It is a formal assurance process, distinct from advice and guidance, focused on assessing practice against recognised standards ar key stages of the consultation lifecycle.
If you are not ready to meet the Consultation Mark yet we can help you with our other advice and guidance which is set out below.
Why?
Consultation is high profile, sensitive or likely to be scrutinised. Our advice and guidance on quality, standards and assurance is particularly useful where credibility, public trust and defensibility matter, and where leaders need independent confidence that consultation meets recognised standards and is being approached in the right way.
How?
- Review consultation plans before they go live
- Sense check proportionality and appropriateness
- Assess against recognised standards and principles
- Identify risks, gaps or weaknesses early
- Provide independent feedback and recommendations
- Advise on compliance, risk and defensibility
- Help prepare for scrutiny, challenge or reporting
- Provide independent assurance to boards and senior leaders
- Facilitate reflective reviews and lessons learned sessions, and support embedding learning into future systems and processes.
Who?
This service is for public bodies, commissioners, senior leaders and programme teams responsible for high impact or contested consultation, who want independent advice or assurance that their approach is robust, credible and grounded in good practice.
In Practice
These are the kinds of things our partners use the Centre for Consultation for
Preparation
- Reviewing consultation plans before they go live
- Sense checking whether proposed activity is proportionate and appropriate
- Advising whether organisations are ready for formal assurance through the Consultation Mark or whether a lighter touch review would be more helpful
- Stakeholder analysis and mapping
- Identifying risks (including risk workshops), gaps or weaknesses early, before they become public issues.
Independent Quality Assurance
- Assessing consultation activity against recognised standards and principles
- Providing independent written feedback on strengths and areas for improvement
- Supporting internal teams to respond to findings and recommendations
- Offering the Consultation Mark where appropriate and by agreement.
Strengthening Credibility
- Advising on compliance with consultation related legislation and guidance
- Supporting organisations preparing for scrutiny, challenge or reporting
- Providing independent assurance to boards, senior leaders or regulators
- Helping teams evidence good practice in decision making processes.
Learning from Experience
- Facilitating lessons learned or reflective review sessions after major consultations
- Supporting organisations to embed learning into future practice
- Helping teams improve systems, processes and internal guidance over time.