Having the right leaders was seen as a key issue

As a mother of two toddlers, there is precious little spare time to digest and analyse the minutiae of government policy, says Mrs Tees-Nutt, who lives in Sutton Coldfield.

So when she was selected to take part in the Downing Street forum she felt somewhat nervous at the prospect.

"But I've realised it's a lot about common sense and everyone's opinions count.

"[The forum] was fabulous in terms of meeting some quite senior people in the cabinet, and it was very interesting to meet a cross-section of people from society."

We really believed that rather than the local people getting involved too much, it was about getting the right leaders Participant Anna Tees-Nutt Analysis: Citizens speak up

The Citizen Forum was part of a policy review by the government, and meant to provide ministers with the opportunity to hear what ordinary people think about things.

The findings will be presented to a meeting of the Cabinet on Thursday.

Mrs Tees-Nutt says she would not describe herself as cynical, but said she would be "very keen" to see how the debate would translate into real policies in practice.

With a room full of people of different ages, sexes, races and social backgrounds there was a huge range of views, she said, which were recorded by mentors sitting in on group discussions.

After debating up to 15 different topics, Mrs Tees-Nutt says she took away two key conclusions from the day.

"The first thing was a that a blanket policy doesn't fit. Every single debate we went into, the blanket policy just would not fit.

"So we went with this rule of 80:20, if it suited the majority of people then we would go with that policy and worry about the 20% later.

"The second critical thing was we really believed that rather than the local people getting involved too much it was about getting the right leaders in place, not just in government but in the various public services such as the head of the local NHS trust.

"Our general view was that if those leadership qualities filtered down that communications would be effective and services would improve."

'Window dressing'

Specific issues were also covered - ranging from involving local people more in the education system to the standards of GP services.

"There was some quite innovative thinking," such as changing GP surgery opening times to evenings and weekends, adds Mrs Tees-Nutt, a senior manager at Barclays Bank who is currently on a career break.

It might not come as a surprise to many politicians to hear that representing everyone's views is nigh on impossible.

"Some people from the Leeds area felt very, very strongly about youths on the streets. People from my area, we didn't feel particularly threatened by that, so in terms of prioritising issues, we didn't see people hanging about on the streets as an issue, these people did."

When it came to discussing having more police on the street, the view from Mrs Tees-Nutt's group was that people wanted to see more of them.

The group was selected by pollsters Ipsos Mori

"What was interesting though was that when the mentor in our group threw in questions like 'will you be prepared to pay the extra tax to facilitate these changes' people weren't necessarily that fully committed."

The scheme - part of a wider policy review by the government - has been criticised as meaningless "window dressing" by some.

But for some who took part it did at least enhance their appreciation of the dilemmas policymakers face, said Mrs Tees-Nutt.

"We would evaluate one thing, then as soon as you tried to prioritise it against another issue it made it very, very difficult to decide which was the priority, particularly in financial terms, which one you would choose as your preference.

"It's changed my opinion phenomenally, in terms of the complexity of the analysis that needs to go on, and how difficult it is ultimately to make decisions on a blanket level that clearly will only suit a certain number of people."