Citizen Participation

Citizen participation allows you to think along about plans of the municipality

By citizen participation we mean the involvement of residents, organizations, businesses and other stakeholders in the creation and implementation of policies and plans. The initiative for this lies with the municipality.

In recent years we have learned a lot about citizen participation. One of the most important lessons is that good preparation of the participation process is very important. At an early stage it should be clear whether a topic is suitable for participation, and what role the municipality and residents can play.

Before we start participation, we make a number of things clear:

• What is the purpose or intent of participation?
• What level of participation is appropriate for this topic? Is it about being involved, deciding, thinking along or participating?
• How is the input of residents included in the decision?
• What are the main questions, the space to think along and the content or financial limits?
• Who is involved? Think residents, organizations, companies or other interested parties.
• In what way are they involved?
• How is information from the process shared?
• What are the costs of the participation process?
• How and when will the process be evaluated?
• And: who is the competent authority; the municipal executive or the municipal council?

This method helps us to involve residents in a careful and clear way in plans in our municipality.