Participatory Budgeting
Participatory budgeting is a process which allows members of a community to participate in making spending decisions about local things that affect them.. Parish Councils are local authorities and generally have a much closer relationship with the community than do the larger principal authorities. They should be an ideal basis for PB and RAY’s project set out to test this idea.
So when this new approach to public engagement developed it attracted the attention of a wide range of people, in Britain and many other countries, who sought to explore its suitability in their locality. The labour Government was sufficiently keen on promoting community engagement to set up a programme of participatory budgeting exercises across local authorities in England from 2007 with the aim of piloting and promoting it, and the Participatory Budgeting Unit was established by Church Action on Poverty in 2001, partly funded by Central Government, as a resource to support the exercise, to learn from experience, to promote the benefits of the technique and to promote good practice.
Currently, the Coalition Government’s promotion of the “Big Society” is leading them to take an interest in many aspects of local activism, local self help and community engagement and so the strong governmental interest in PB continues.
Participatory budgeting is already happening
Over 100 local authorities are using PB in their areas now. So are some Police Authorities, Primary Care Trusts and Housing Associations. Although not on the scale of this project, there are also parish councils using PB already. It is becoming an established way of engaging communities and has a growing track record.
Why should a parish council be interested?
Parish councillors frequently complain about how difficult it is to get their community involved in the parish council’s business. Major planning proposals, wind farms, waste incinerators and such like are usually pretty effective in filling parish meetings with members of the public anxious to know how they might be affected, but otherwise, it is often said, no-one is interested.
PB has been shown to be a great way to get people involved. It can
- Encourage people to bring forward ideas for their community
- Foster a greater understanding of local community issues
- Get people involved in their community and in voluntary activity
- Make sure that what gets done is what the community most wants
- Helps the community understand how parish business affects them
- Helps people see how their council tax is being used
- Encourage new people to stand for election as parish councillors
RAY has developed a toolkit and DVD for parish councils to use. Watch our video here:
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 Participatory Budgeting toolkit.pdf | 838.51 KB |
