Kendal Town Council has engaged Shared Future, an experienced, local, not-for-profit social enterprise who facilitated both Lancaster and Leeds Citizens Juries, to manage the Kendal Citizens’ Jury.

Town Councillors Cllr. Giles Archibald, Cllr. Chris Rowley, Cllr. Eamonn Hennessy and Cllr. Jon Owen have sought advice from Kendal resident Professor Rebecca Willis (who has written extensively on politics and climate change) and local author Professor Mike Berners Lee who wrote ‘There Is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break to kick start this process.

• Sent out four thousand letters to randomly selected addresses across the town inviting people from age fifteen upwards to join the jury
• Selected twenty people who reflect the diversity of the wider population (in terms of age, gender, attitudes to climate change and geography)
• Agreed to pay the group of twenty people £200 of high street vouchers each to take part
• Set nine sessions where the jury will share ideas and opinions with each other and hear from a range of outside experts who they will be able to question
• Arranged the final two sessions where the group will be supported to write (and agree upon) a set of recommendations for the town
• Established a jury Oversight Panel to ensure the process is fair and unbiased.
• Set up a support group to share knowledge of the process and provide assistance with IT, evaluation, communications and creative engagement

Once the sessions are complete, the jury recommendations will be presented to the Town Council (and other organisations) who have agreed the following:

“The recommendations written by jury members in their own words will be presented to a meeting of Full Council on Monday 2nd November, who within 3 months, will explain how they will respond to or act on each point. The recommendations will feed into the future work of Kendal Town Council’s Carbon Neutral Kendal Group.

Given there are three tiers of local Government (Town, District and County,) it is likely one or more of the recommendations will relate to services for which either the District or County, or indeed other organisations, are responsible. This is why the Jury’s Oversight Panel includes representatives from all three tiers.

We are encouraging other organisations to commit to respond to the recommendations and will update the website as we make progress.”

Other members of the oversight panel have made commitments to act on the recommendations made by the jury.