Armed with the results of its user-research and workshop projects, the Design Council team embarked on the most intensive part of the transformation project: spending a week in and around the constituency office of Doncaster North.
For seven days, the Design Council worked alongside the constituency team, harnessing its creativity and frontline experience to develop, determine and refine the final outcomes of the project.
It was a busy week, according to the team. ‘We had to get up to speed on how the constituency office works, hold workshops with constituents, collaborate with them and the MP’s team to develop ideas, get feedback on our initial prototype solutions and begin the process of planning for implementation.’
Over the week, the Design Council and constituency teams began to map out what they hoped would become a new service offering, not just for Doncaster North, but for all MPs. ‘We think that MPs need to expand their idea of services forward, to strengthen what we’ve begun to call ‘the root system of parliament’,’ explains Mil Vikovic. ‘Constituency offices clearly have an important role to play – but that role can’t simply be as a fast track for rushing people’s problems to the front of whichever bureaucratic queue. Instead, we want to see constituency offices vested with a status commensurate to their responsibility as a local branch of Parliament.’
Ideas and initiatives were fleshed out into more fully formed actions and objectives, and the team developed a clear service offering describing what the public should expect from their MPs, including:
- Services to solve problems at a group level including group mediation and group surgeries on popular topics like housing, immigration or benefit claims
- Services that support constituents to make things happen for themselves such as help running local campaigns and being a hub for local projects that build local democracy. In this way, constituency offices should become incubators for public ideas and political action
- Listening services where constituents can voice their concerns such as street surgeries, public meetings, and reverse invites where the public invite the MP to visit them
- Information services that communicate the role and work of an MP’s whole office such as newsletters, websites, and a new ‘Hansard’ for constituents – a record of the local work of your MP
- Services that support individuals with individual problems such as phone line advice, one-to-one surgeries and letter writing
- Services that provide new ways for people to discuss opportunities rather than problems with their MP, encouraging groups of friends and neighbours to invite their MP on to their own turf to hear their views and ideas.
With this new service framework established, the Design Council team moved to the final phase of the project: creating a ten-step guide for every MP, listing practical things they can do to rebuild democracy in their constituency.
