Access in the case study areas

Having identified the types of local authority that I wished to study I drew on existing contacts to help identify those authorities that might be most responsive to taking part in the research. I contacted equality officers in authorities I had worked with in the past and friends and colleagues who might have contacts with equality officers in their authority. I quickly identified two authorities, a London borough and a unitary authority (City Council) where I knew local women who were able to put me in contact with senior managers with responsibility for equalities. I wrote to both of these managers explaining the background to my research project and asking if they would be willing to be interviewed and if they would encourage members of their team to be interviewed. Both were supportive, agreeing to interview and providing me with names and contact details for the equalities team. I visited the websites for both authorities to identify any councillors that were listed as having an interest in or responsibility for equalities. I used a combination of internet research and personal contacts to draw up an initial list of civil society organisations in each authority to interview. I wrote to all of these people asking if they would be willing to be interviewed. No one refused, but several did not reply. During my initial research trips to each authority I interviewed the senior managers and asked for their help in arranging interviews with those members of the equalities team that had not replied, and with identifying local councillors and civil society activists. Their support proved critical. I found that being able to start an email with a sentence saying that a senior manager suggested that I speak to the person I was contacting resulted in a far higher response rate. This was in line with Savin-Badin and Howell Major’s observation that gaining access to and the support of gatekeepers within an organisation can be a crucial part of the research process (Savin Badin and Howell Major 2013). It was also an early indication of the significance of the attitude of

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senior management within a large bureaucracy. At the same time I was anxious to ensure that all participants freely consented to take part in the study so was careful to word my emails to make it clear that their manager had suggested I ask if they were able to talk to me rather than using wording that might imply their manager wanted them to meet me. The issue of consent and other ethical questions are discussed in more detail below.

The third local authority was harder to identify. I wanted a rural, or largely rural county council with a Conservative leadership, ideally in a different part of the country to the City Council to avoid overlapping civil society organisations. I had worked on a number of projects for the Centre for Human Rights in Practice at Warwick Law School and their co-director suggested a county council with which he had contacts. I approached his contact at the council, an equality officer, who was willing to help with my research and offered to contact her colleagues on my behalf. This was the only one of the three authorities where I was not able to speak to a person responsible for equality at Director level. I spoke to the manager of the Equalities team, but did not get a response from the Director despite repeated approaches. There are a number of possible reasons for this; I had been put in touch with the Directors at both the other two authorities through shared personal contacts but did not have this personal contact with the Director at County Council. Both the Directors who agreed to be interviewed had a strong personal commitment to work on equality, although their responsibilities covered a wider range of policy areas, so may have agreed to take part because of an interest in the research subject. This may not have been the case with the Director at County Council. Alternatively it may have been simply a matter of bad timing; all the local authority officers I talked to repeatedly complained about increasing work levels as a result of the public spending cuts. In County Council equality work was the responsibility of the Director of Social Care. Since Social Care services at County Council were experiencing significant restructuring during the research period it may have been that the Director did not have the time to take part in an interview. Fortunately all the other members of the equalities team and councillors with responsibility for equality agreed to be interviewed.

I decided in the interests of keeping the case studies ‘bounded’ that I would concentrate on those civil society organisations whose work focussed on equality

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and which had at least some contact with the local authority. I used internet searches, the local councils for voluntary service and ‘snowballing’ (asking other interviewees who they would recommend I speak to), to identify civil society groups that met this criteria. During the research period civil society organisations faced significant cuts to their funding meaning that many of the groups I had identified or been

recommended to speak to had closed down and in others key staff had left by the time I started my field work. In London Borough I found that two of the civil society groups I interviewed worked not only with London Borough but across London, and in one case nationally. This had the advantage that they could compare their

experience with London Borough with the experience of working with other authorities, but also meant that it was sometimes difficult to distinguish which authority they were talking about. In County Council many of the civil society groups that were most active in lobbying public authorities locally were actually based in the nearby city (covered by a separate authority). I spoke to two of these who met my other criteria – they worked on equality issues and they were engaged with County Council. There appeared to be few civil society organisations based in county council working on equalities that had a relationship with the authority.