Bringing the public's voice into organisational strategy
Credit: Ch_pski, Unsplash
In 2025 two of our regulator clients, the Bar Standards Board (BSB) and the General Dental Council (GDC) were in the throes of drafting their new organisational strategies. Both were considering their priorities for the future and developing a clear roadmap of how to get there. Both were also actively thinking about their own remit, in particular how they work with other organisations and their potential advocacy role.
They recognised the need to take key stakeholders with them on this journey and to go further than the required formal consultation. They were both committed to hearing and embedding the public voice into their work and ensuring that any public engagement was more than a ‘tick box’ exercise. They saw the engagement programme as a real opportunity for the public to consider what they need regulation of barristers and dental professionals to deliver in the future. They commissioned Community Research to make this happen.
From our previous work for professions regulators, we knew that people’s understanding of professional regulation is generally low. As a result, we needed to take people on a journey to build their understanding and reach an informed view before they could prioritise issues and comment on the draft strategies. In short, we took them from being (relatively uninformed) consumers, to being (better informed) citizens.
In both instances we needed to convey recent developments in the legal and dental sectors in an accessible way. The regulators had things in common in that they were working against a backdrop of similar challenges i.e. their respective sectors were facing rapid technological change, difficulties relating to access to services and funding/cost of living pressures, amongst other issues.
For both clients we adopted a staged approach.
An initial phase was used to understand the public’s current perceptions and their future expectations of the professions, as well as exploring initial views on priorities for inclusion in the strategies. This was done through a series of in-person discussion groups for the BSB and via an online community for the GDC.
Participants were then reconvened for follow up research, conducted through live online groups. These sessions were used to explore and unpick the feedback from the first phase of the research, as well as testing some of the draft content in the strategies and considering how closely participants believed these priorities aligned with their spontaneous expectations.
The timing of the sessions differed for each client in order to fit their specific needs. The two phases were conducted fairly close together for the GDC who needed feedback to be collected alongside the formal consultation. The sessions were more staggered for the BSB as they wanted the opportunity to use the feedback from the first session to inform the draft content to be tested in the follow-up session.
The GDC consultation feedback, including our research report, has been published here. The BSB will be testing an updated version of its strategy with stakeholders in 2026.