It was good to see the Communities and Local Government website give a plug to participatory budgeting last week – you can read it here:
www.communities.gov.uk/communities/bigsociety/participatorybudgeting/
And, quite by coincidence, on the very next day 70 people from Local Authorities, Fire & Rescue Services and Police gathered at Devon & Somerset Fire & Rescue HQ near Exeter to learn about participatory budgeting (PB) from 14 authorities in the South West already leading on it. Phil Teece of the PB Unit also flew down from Manchester to take part, and Emily Fennell of the Big Society Network came to look for more recruits for their project on broadening the use of PB to mainstream spending – she only needs 10 nationwide and found 4 already keen to take part from the South West.
We’ll be adding the presentations, feedback and thoughts from the day to the Creating Excellence website soon, so all I’ll say here is that the SW PB Development Group which put the day together is now working on how and where we go next. The event and group are coordinated by the Regional Empowerment Partnership and funded by the South West Improvement and Efficiency Partnership. It is very encouraging that when the group met for a debrief and look forward yesterday, there was nothing short of determination to see that the connections that have been made are kept going. If localism and decentralisation are to develop in neighbourhoods, communities and isolated rural councils, they will be needed.
Update: Presentations from the event can now be downloaded here.
Empowerment Works is a movement of people and organisations committed to building support for community empowerment in the South West and beyond. For more information please visit the Empowering Communities website.
Yesterday the government announced 16 new areas to trial community budgets, where all the public money in an area is pooled so that it can be used more effectively (as ‘total place’ or place based budgeting). For these community budgets to be successful and really based on community need they will need to take a participatory budgeting approach, though of course this is more challenging with large budgets than with small grants programmes.
ReplyDeleteSadly only one of these areas was in the South West (Swindon) though 5 were in London. Still, that doesn’t stop us pushing forward with co-ordinating different departments’ budgets through local partnerships and involving the community in funding decisions.
There are some interesting examples of local authorities consulting on spending cuts (not a comprehensive list, do share if you know of others):
- Cornwall Council http://www.cornwall.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=25332
- Swindon http://www.swindon.gov.uk/yourcouncil/haveyoursay/budget2011.htm
- Devon http://toughchoices.co.uk/
- Gloucestershire www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/meetingthechallenge
- South Gloucestershire https://discuss.southglos.gov.uk/consult.ti/Budget2011/consultationHome
However as we know consultation is not the same as genuine involvement and it will be interesting to see how these approaches are evaluated – are results shared? did people really feel they had a say?
There's an article in the Guardian today about how meaningful consultation on budget cuts is. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/oct/27/local-council-budget-cuts-residents
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