What’s a council to do? You launch high-profile plans to redevelop St Peter’s Square, the town hall, and bring the Theatre Royal back to life.

And what does the public say? Bugger all, basically.

From a new Manchester council report:

 That’s right – six responses, of which precisely half were from people rather than organisations. But at least…

There’s a serious point to all this. If people won’t respond to this sort of thing – a proposal that will utterly transform some of the city’s most famous landmarks – what will they respond to?

The assumption has always been that it’s a failure of process. If only the council held big public meetings, or allowed people to comment online, etc. etc.

But the fact is they now do many of these things. And still people don’t have their say.

Which raises two uncomfortable possibilities:  that the public doesn’t respond because either (a) it thinks whatever it says will be ignored; or (b) it simply doesn’t care.