This should be a rich time for change with the public placed right at its centre.  There are now more than enough reasons to re-imagine the relationship between the public and public services - not in a closed, inward-looking way but through the messy business of real involvement.  The platform, as they say, is well and truly burning.

Instead the path to meaningful involvement seems largely and unnecessarily closed to the public.  Leaders still feel it is legitimate to emerge from closed processes (at least now held in smoke-free rooms) to articulate the grim choices they have in store.  Consultation in a neat and tidy form follows.  Opinion in a controlled way is sought, maybe using new media to give a veneer of modern engagement.  Listening is seen to be done. Decisions are made.  An active public is thus excluded in the name of democratic legitimacy. 

Much of this is down to the blight of public services generally - entrenched, learnt behaviour.  Service leaders expect to hold on to control.  They have been elected or appointed for that purpose, haven't they? The public are so used to being excluded they are not up in arms. 

Even shiny new ideas still display old behaviours. One Place, the online central resource for performance data for a range of local public services which has been hatched in a modified version of the closed process, is some way off being the positive way forward it is claimed to be.  Crucially there is still nothing of substance to offer on public involvement as a true definer and driver for change. It perpetuates a view that the new world is a matter for leaders using modified rules of old-style paternalism, built on a rock of legitimacy by proxy.  One Place has a lot to recommend it but this still feels like a world where change is neat and has to be kept away from the public, with involvement limited mainly to engagement on lived experience.

Ironically the prevailing agenda is in part to change public behaviours.  It is a shame this does not extend to changing the behaviours of the leaders themselves to embrace involvement - from which so much different and positive could flow.

But there is more to the story.   The reluctance to open up is framed by the never-ending wrestling match for control of public services - even more of a war to the death when there are to be fewer services to control.  There still seem to be far too many old scores to settle between councils and other less legitimate bodies.  This hopeless waste of effort has been responsible also for Scrutiny limping forward at a snail's pace, with little sign across the divide of stirrings amongst the Non Executive community to advocate for dynamic governance and real involvement. 

I doubt whether the public takes too keen an interest in who accounts to whom and all the cartwheels involved. They rightly want to have a reassuring sense of being able to trust services run on their behalf and to play a part in their design and delivery. Both desires are largely denied as things stand.

It would be disgraceful if a narrow tit-for-tat on legitimacy between different agencies in any way prevented public involvement coming to life at the time it is most needed. Ironically the current leaders of public sector thinking are using old behaviours to create the conditions where the bluff on involvement might just be called.