The top Delib alternatives for statutory consultations in the UK

Delib is a Bristol-based UK company whose Citizen Space platform focuses on publishing formal consultations, capturing responses and reporting on outcomes. It has strong references across UK central government, regulators and councils, and is listed on the UK G-Cloud Digital Marketplace. For many public bodies, it is the incumbent tool for the consultation publishing task, which is exactly why the question of alternatives usually starts somewhere else: what happens around and after the consultation?

Citizen Space does the consultation publishing job well. Formal consultations are set up, published, promoted and closed in a structured way; responses are captured consistently; and reporting supports the analysis stage. Its UK government footprint is real, from central departments to regulators, and being UK-based removes the time-zone and data-residency questions that US and Australian platforms raise.

The gap appears between consultations. A statutory consultation is only one stage in an ongoing relationship with stakeholders. The people you consult today are often the same people you'll engage with on future projects, service changes and policy reviews. Citizen Space is designed around the consultation itself: publishing, responses and analysis. The wider engagement activity that gives those consultations context, including meetings, correspondence, events and stakeholder history, sits outside its scope. For statutory work, where organisations must be able to defend the whole engagement process, that context is often just as important as the consultation itself.

Let’s take a closer look at how Tractivity, the UK stakeholder relationship management (SRM) platform, compares for statutory consultation programmes.

What a statutory consultation actually requires

UK statutory consultations are tested against the Gunning principles: consultation at a formative stage, adequate information for intelligent consideration, adequate time to respond, and conscientious consideration of the responses. The government's own consultation principles set similar expectations. When a consultation is challenged by judicial review, an inspector at a DCO examination, or an FOI request, the question is rarely whether the consultation page was published. It is whether the organisation can evidence who was engaged, what they were told, what they said and how it shaped the decision.

Tractivity is built around that evidence burden. Every interaction is time-stamped, attributed and reportable, with a full audit trail and role-based permissions. Conscientious consideration stops being an assertion and becomes a report

The consultation response versus the whole relationship

Citizen Space's record starts when a consultation opens and ends when it closes. Tractivity creates a continuous record of engagement, from the early conversations that demonstrate a formative stage through to consultation responses and post-consultation follow-up. Engagement captured through the included Engage-360 portal sits alongside meetings, commitments and outcomes on a single stakeholder record, providing a complete history of the relationship.

That continuity matters most for statutory consultees and repeat participants. A parish council, environmental body or landowner consulted on this year's scheme carries their full engagement history into the next, allowing relationships to build rather than reset. It also ensures valuable insight isn't lost when staff move on, or records are buried in individual inboxes.

Audit-ready by default

The proof points come from programmes where scrutiny is heaviest. EDF Energy has logged around  30,000 stakeholder issues at a 100% response rate across the Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C consultation programmes. Anglian Water manages 13,000+ stakeholders across a £10 billion investment programme, including the Cambridge Waste Water Treatment Plant Relocation, a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project. Regulated clients report engagement outcomes to Ofgem and Ofwat directly from the platform's 150+ pre-built reports.

One record across consultations and years

Statutory consultation is rarely a one-off. Local authorities run rolling programmes, utilities consult through successive price reviews, and the NHS engages continuously on service change. Tractivity is designed for that reality, maintaining a single stakeholder graph across every project and consultation so relationships and context are never lost. AI-powered sentiment analysis shows how opinion evolves, while AI Summarise turns years of engagement history into concise, actionable insight in seconds. Because all AI operates within Tractivity's Microsoft Azure environment and customer data is never used to train models, information governance teams can approve its use with confidence.

UK credentials on both sides

Both platforms are UK-based and G-Cloud listed, so this is not a typical UK-versus-overseas comparison. Tractivity's accreditation stack includes ISO 27001:2022, Cyber Essentials Plus and the NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit, all supported by annual audits. Data is hosted in Microsoft Azure UK South by default, accessibility aligns with WCAG 2.2 Level A with Level AA targeted for 2026, and Welsh language support is available for organisations operating under the Welsh Language Standards. As part of any procurement process, buyers should compare each supplier's published accreditations and compliance credentials directly.

Pricing and support

Tractivity publishes its pricing openly with subscriptions starting from £9,495, all-inclusive. The price includes everything needed to run and manage engagement activity, including the Engage-360 consultation portal, surveys, events, communications, reporting, onboarding, training and ongoing support, without additional modules or record limits. Delib's pricing is available through its G-Cloud service listing.

The same all-inclusive approach extends to implementation and support. Every customer is assigned a named Customer Success Manager from onboarding onwards, with unmetered support included as standard. Implementations typically take four to six weeks and include data migration, configuration and role-based training, all at no additional cost.

Scale and suitability

If the requirement is simply to publish and manage consultations, a specialist consultation platform may be enough, and Delib has built a strong reputation in UK government by doing exactly that. The search for alternatives usually begins when the requirement extends beyond the consultation itself: managing statutory consultees across multiple schemes, capturing engagement that happens in meetings and inboxes as well as online, demonstrating the integrity of the entire process to regulators, and giving multiple teams access to a single shared record.

Tractivity has been built around that broader challenge for more than 25 years. It is trusted by more than 112 UK organisations, including HM Treasury, the Welsh Government, the Department for Transport, Norfolk County Council, National Grid, EDF Energy, Anglian Water, and NHS organisations ranging from individual trusts to integrated care boards.