Consultation Is Not Co-Design: Five Signs People Are Being Heard but Not Influencing Change

People with lived experience get invited into a lot of rooms these days. Advisory panels, feedback sessions, consultation forums, all of it sounds like progress, and sometimes it is. But there’s a question worth asking every time one of those invitations lands: has this decision actually been left open, or has it already been made, and I’m just here to hear about it?

Being invited into the room is not the same as having influence inside it. Here’s how to tell the difference.

Sign one: the story comes after the decision

If the invitation arrives once the direction’s already locked in, and what’s wanted is a quote, a case study, a bit of colour to soften an announcement, that’s not consultation. That’s decoration. Real input happens while the options are still open, not after they’ve quietly closed.

Sign two: input stops at “feelings” and never reaches “decisions”

There’s a real difference between being asked how something feels and being asked to help decide what happens next. Genuine shared power means people get a say in how the problem itself gets defined, what options are even on the table, and which one actually gets chosen. If the conversation only ever touches the first of those, it’s consultation wearing co-design’s clothes.

Sign three: lived experience contributors aren’t paid like the expertise they’re offering

Expertise gets paid, that’s just how it works, except when the expertise comes from lived experience, and somehow that’s treated as a favour someone’s doing for free. If an organisation would pay a consultant for their professional judgement, it should pay a person with lived experience for theirs too. Anything less says the input is welcome, but not valued the same way everyone else’s is.

Sign four: the loop never closes

Plenty of consultations end with a thank you and silence. No one hears what happened to what they said, whether it shaped anything, or landed straight in a drawer. A genuine process closes the loop. It comes back and says, here’s what changed because you spoke up, and here’s what didn’t, and why. Without that, there’s no way to tell if the input mattered or just filled a box on a form.

Sign five: the same people keep showing up to influence nothing

When the same faces get invited to the same sessions, year after year, and the outcomes never seem to move, that’s not a coincidence. That’s a system that’s worked out how to look consultative without ever having to change. Genuine engagement shows up in outcomes shifting over time. If nothing’s moved after years of “consultation,” the consultation was never the thing doing the deciding.

What real shared power looks like

None of this means consultation is worthless, sometimes it’s exactly the right tool for the job. But it has to be named honestly for what it is. Co-design means people help define the problem, shape the real options, and carry weight in the final call. It means paying people properly for what they bring. It means showing your working, what changed and what didn’t, instead of leaving people to guess. Get all of that right, and the room stops being symbolic and starts being where things actually happen.

The bit that matters most

Being invited into the room is not the same as having influence inside it.

A seat at the table means something only when the table’s still deciding. If the outcome was settled before anyone walked in, that’s not co-design, whatever it’s called on the invitation.

Madeleine x