Article: Residents at the helm

Residents at the helm

On 1 January 2027, the consultation bylaw disappears from every Dutch municipality. In its place comes a participation bylaw, prescribed by the Act on Strengthening Participation at Decentralised Level which the Dutch Senate adopted in June 2024 (Eerste Kamer, 2024). On paper, a legal tidy-up. In practice, a question older than any law: who does the city actually belong to?

Consultation meant having a say in advance on plans that were already largely drawn up at city hall. The new law pries that window open. From now on, residents are also involved in execution and evaluation. And there is a right to challenge: the right of residents and civic organisations to ask the municipality to take over a public task, possibly with budget attached.

Not a detail. A different role-distribution board.

From paternalism to partnership

The municipality as the all-knowing parent who knows best what is good for its residents; that story is over. Not because civil servants have suddenly changed, but because the city has. People organise themselves through WhatsApp groups, neighbourhood cooperatives, energy collectives, cooking clubs and playground committees. They look after parks they don't own and the community centres that belong to all of us. And they often know more locally than the department writing policy about them.

The law acknowledges that shift. Not in so many words, but in its logic: the municipality is not the owner of the public interest. It is its host.

What we can learn from England

Anyone thinking 'I've seen this before': you're right. England went first in 2011 with the Localism Act and the Community Right to Challenge. Voluntary and community bodies, charities, parish councils and even groups of two or more local-authority employees were allowed to submit an 'expression of interest' to take over a council service (House of Commons Library, 2018). Individual citizens were not on that list; anyone who wanted to take part had to organise.

The romantic picture was citizen power taking over. The reality was more modest. By December 2014, around fifty expressions of interest had been submitted. Fifty. For all of England.

What went wrong? Three things, and none of them were political.

1. Residents had to compete in formal tenders against professional providers who handle procedures as a day job.
2. The procedures took time and money that a neighbourhood group simply doesn't have.
3. 'Taking over' often turned out not to be the wish at all. People wanted to co-design, not run an entire operation.

The British debate therefore shifted from a Right to Challenge to what has since been called a Right to Reshape Services: not taking over, but redesigning together. A nuance, and precisely the nuance that makes the difference between an idea that succeeds and an idea that bleeds out in a tender.

The benefits, lined up

If the law lands well, it delivers three things.

Local knowledge in the right place. The people who live there know which playground is dangerous, which path stays wet, which community centre is alive and which stands empty. That knowledge is free. It currently gets thrown away.

Ownership. A park the neighbourhood maintains itself stays beautiful longer. Not on principle, but because it has become someone's.

Trust that compounds. Trust isn't built by a communications campaign. You earn it by keeping promises, calling back on time, and being honest when something can't be done. A participation bylaw forces municipalities to write those promises down more formally. Which is, oddly enough, a gift to both resident and civil servant.

The drawbacks, honestly

Reading the law as a solution misses the point. The risks are real.

Paternalism lives in attitude, not in a bylaw. A civil servant who has spent years learning to avoid risk doesn't change because of a new section of law. The behavioural test is harder than the legal one.

Not everyone takes part. Articulate residents with time, networks and language skills are perfectly happy with a right to challenge. The quiet majority is not. Without deliberate effort, a divide opens between those who participate and those who don't, and with it a new form of injustice.

Procurement thresholds. The British lesson. The moment a task crosses the European procurement threshold, the neighbourhood initiative disappears into a procedure it cannot match in scale or legal capacity.

Representative democracy stays. The council still decides. Expectations not met feel like broken promises. So the municipality will need to say, in advance: this is what we will do with your input, and this is what we won't. Clear boundaries are kinder than vague promises.

Trust cannot be decreed. In municipalities where trust in government is low, a participation bylaw doesn't fix that problem. It only makes it visible.

What it really takes

At BR-ND People, we mostly look at behaviour. Not at the policy document, but at what people will feel, say, choose or do differently tomorrow.

For a municipality, that means:

• A civil servant who doesn't start with 'that's not possible, because', but with 'what do you need?'.
• An alderman who doesn't adopt a neighbourhood initiative for a press moment, but lets it set its own pace.
• A councillor who sets boundaries and then gives space, instead of weighing in on every detail.
• A communications team that doesn't make leaflets, but organises conversations.

For residents, it means something uncomfortable. Taking part costs time. Carrying out an idea is harder than complaining about one. And sometimes, along the way, it turns out the municipality, with all its bulk, did have a point somewhere.

People are the brand, governments included

A brand is not what the communications department says. A brand is what the people in an organisation do every day. We see it in every company, every institution and every municipality we work with.

For a municipality, that means something very concrete. The brand 'City of Tilburg' (or any other municipality) is not the visual identity, not the campaign, not even the alderman on television. It is the sum of thousands of small moments. The civil servant who calls back, or doesn't. The front desk that thinks along, or refers on. The councillor who sets boundaries, or weighs in on every detail. The participation bylaw written down as a promise, and the degree to which that promise is recognisable on a Tuesday morning at city hall.

What the new law does is something marketing has been trying for years: it shifts the brand from the communications department to the everyday practice. Consultation was something the municipality arranged at a desk. Participation is something that has to prove itself every day, in every conversation, in every decision. Which makes every civil servant a brand carrier, whether that role appears in a job description or not.

A participation law that works, then, is not primarily a legal design. It is a brand design. And the brand stands or falls with the people who make it every day.

The municipality as host

The best participation bylaws we'll see in the next two years won't be about residents. They'll be about the municipality itself. About how it behaves as a host. About what it promises, what it doesn't, and how it deals with initiatives that challenge it.

The behaviour of every civil servant, councillor and alderman is what a resident ultimately experiences as 'the municipality'. A new law cannot enforce that behaviour. It can at best be a peg to hang it on. A rather useful peg, mind you.

For anyone working as an executive or communications professional on a story like this, one simple test applies: would you want your own street to be treated the way your bylaw prescribes? If not, the work isn't done yet.

Because the end of paternalism is not a destination. It is a daily choice.

Frequently asked questions

What changes on 1 January 2027?

The consultation bylaw disappears and is replaced by a participation bylaw. Residents are not only consulted in advance, but also involved in the execution and evaluation of policy. A right to challenge is introduced: residents and civic organisations may ask the municipality to take over a public task, with accompanying budget where appropriate.

What is the right to challenge exactly?

The right of residents and civic organisations to ask the municipality to carry out a public task themselves. The municipality weighs the request and, if it decides positively, may launch a formal tender on which the initiative can bid. A Dutch answer to the British Community Right to Challenge.

What can we learn from the British Right to Challenge?

England went first in 2011 with the Localism Act. By December 2014, around fifty formal challenges had been submitted, for the entire country. The lessons: procurement thresholds shut out small initiatives, procedures cost time and money that neighbourhood groups don't have, and residents often want to co-design rather than take over. The British debate therefore moved towards 'Right to Reshape Services': redesigning together.

BR-ND People has worked in the public domain in recent years. We are quartermaster of Amsterdam Impact, the initiative for creative entrepreneurs who put collaboration for societal value first, and we are building the identity of cities and provinces such as Tilburg and Zuid-Holland. Residents at the helm is not an abstract case for us. It is work we try to sharpen every week.

Want to talk further? Call or email Kim Cramer or Alexander Koene. We're happy to swap practical stories with executives, civil servants and communications professionals working through the same change.

Sources

1. Eerste Kamer (2024). Wet versterking participatie op decentraal niveau (36210). Read the bill.
2. House of Commons Library (2018). Community Right to Challenge (briefing SN06365). Read the briefing.