Opening the Black Box of Stakeholder Consultation: the Development of a Planning Management Tool for the Environment Agency

Abstract Stakeholder participation in decision making processes promises fairness,effectiveness and efficiency and has become the orthodoxy in a wide variety of policy areas, especially in environmental policy making and governance.Central to stakeholder participation is the identification and engagement of those whose contribution is most relevant in any particular case. This paper reports on a study to develop a stakeholder engagement and consultation tool to prepare the Environment Agency Strategic Planning Function for the introduction of the Water Framework Directive. An important outcome of this study was the realisation of the importance of internal stakeholders within the Agency itself, as well as the need to identify and develop external bodies.