Greater Cambridge Citizens' Assembly

A Citizens’ Assembly for Greater Cambridge

In a Citizens’ Assembly, members of the public are brought together to consider a public issue and make a recommendation on what action should be taken on that issue.

They do this by listening to evidence, discussing the evidence they hear, and reaching a conclusion together on what steps the administration should take next. The Assembly’s recommendation is then given to decision makers who decide what will happen next.

Member of the Citizens’ Assembly heard evidence, worked with other participants and came up with recommendations. They had the opportunity to meet with individuals from all walks of life who live and travel regularly within Greater Cambridge, had discussions and heard from engaging expert speakers.

The recommendations from the Citizens’ Assembly were presented to the Greater Cambridge Partnership's Joint Assembly and Executive Board in January/February 2020.

The Citizens' assembly convened in Cambridge, with follow up workshops held online

The citizens’ assembly met over two weekends (7th & 8th September and 5th & 6th October 2019) and took part in over 24 hours of learning, deliberation and decision-making. The process was designed by Involve, with input from the advisory group and GCP officers. 

The citizens’ assembly was set the task to develop recommendations to the Greater Cambridge Partnership in response to the question:

How do we reduce congestion, improve air quality and provide better public transport in Greater Cambridge?

Across the two weekends, the citizens’ assembly heard a range of evidence relating to the challenges of congestion, air quality and public transport – this included learning, exploring and discussing:

• The situation in Greater Cambridge now and projections for the future;
• The impacts of congestion, air quality and public transport on health; the environment;and people’s lives;
• Visions and approaches locally and from further afield on different ways to tackle the problem; and;
• The range of measures that could be used to address the situation.

They identified outcomes they wanted to achieve and deliberated on the pros, cons and considerations of different measures before taking a series of votes to arrive at their collective recommendations. They then looked at their recommended measures and developed a series of messages for the GCP, including about why they were chosen, how they should be implemented.

We have been awarded funding and support from the UK Government's Innovation in Democracy Programme(External link) to hold this Citizens' Assembly. It is jointly delivered by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Two independent organisations delivered the Assembly:

• The Sortition Foundation(External link) promotes the use of stratified, random selection in decision-making. It is responsible for recruiting people to take part in the Assembly; its aim is to ensure the Assembly is broadly representative of the Greater Cambridge community.
• The Involve Foundation(External link) is a UK-wide public participation charity. Involve will run the Citizens’ Assembly - facilitating and designing the process by which the Assembly members learn, consider and come to recommendations about the topic. They will also write the report on the outcomes of the Assembly.

The 60 members of the citizens’ assembly were recruited by the Sortition Foundation through a civic lottery sent to 10,000 postal points in the Greater Cambridge and the wider travel to work area. Households which received the invitation were able to register their interest in participating.
The selection methodology and stratification criteria are both published on the GCP ConsultCambs project page for the Citizens' Assembly.