Neighbourhood planning - will it make any difference

Just thought I'd share a post about new Neighbourhood Planning proposals in the Localism Bill, including a list of the pilot areas in the South West, which is just posted at http://www.southwestforum.org.uk/neighbourhood-planning-will-new-plans-really-make-any-difference

The People’s Budget

Giving people more control over how their area is run is something all political parties say they want, and The People’s Budget is a new campaign to get a much bigger say for local people on how public budgets are spent.  It’s the latest in a series of efforts to interest people in something with a name that is hardly likely to attract headlines and a terrible mouthful to say – Participatory Budgeting.

Persuading local Councillors that their constituents can make better decisions on how to spend money than they can was never going to be easy.  So it’s great that the Participatory Budgeting Unit and others are stirring up more interest in the subject, and using a bit of people power to persuade Councils to move on from using PB just to divvy up small grant pots to taking decisions about serious budgets.  There’s a good discussion on Toby Blume’s Posterous blog.  And there’ll be more here soon, as next week the South West’s PB and Localism Group launches its 52 page guide Localism in Action, which includes 16 pages of case studies tools and tips on PB.  Go to Creating Excellence at http://tinyurl.com/5sv38zz for the flyer, and, from 1^st November, the guide itself.