Holding the Line: Why Lived Experience Panels Matter Now More Than Ever

A year ago, Inclusivitii took on the role of independent facilitator for the Greater Manchester Race Equality Panel (GMREP), the body advising GMCA's leaders on race equality across the city region. A year in, the experience has sharpened something Inclusivitii believes strongly: bodies like GMREP are not a nice to have. They are essential infrastructure, and never more so than in a period of significant social and political change.

Race equality needs a permanent seat at the table, not just a moment of attention. Public commitment to equity tends to rise and fall with the news cycle. Panels like GMREP exist precisely so that scrutiny of race equality does not depend on whether the issue is currently trending. They provide a standing mechanism for challenge and accountability, regardless of the political weather.

Independent voices matter most when pressure is highest. In periods of change, whether economic, political, or institutional, the temptation for any organisation is to quietly deprioritise equity work in favour of more immediate concerns. A panel with genuine independence, and the mandate to advise institutional leadership directly, makes that kind of quiet deprioritisation much harder to do.

Community trust is built through consistency, not gestures. The communities that panels like GMREP represent have seen enough one-off initiatives and short-lived commissions to be sceptical of anything that looks temporary. What builds real trust is the visible, ongoing presence of a body doing this work steadily, year after year, regardless of who is in political office.

These panels are a test of institutional maturity. How a public institution responds to a body set up to hold it accountable says a great deal about that institution's actual, rather than stated, commitment to equity. Institutions that support strong, independent, occasionally uncomfortable scrutiny are demonstrating something far more credible than any policy statement could.

Now is exactly the moment this work matters most. At a time when public trust in institutions is under strain and communities are watching closely for signs of genuine commitment versus performance, panels like GMREP offer something rare: a structured, ongoing, independently facilitated space where race equality remains firmly on the agenda, not as a reaction to events, but as an ongoing responsibility.

A year of facilitating this panel has only reinforced Inclusivitii's view that this work is not optional extra activity sitting alongside the real business of governance. It is part of what good governance actually looks like.

Inclusivitii is the independent facilitator for the Greater Manchester Race Equality Panel.