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More hands on the purse strings

A new approach is changing the involvement of local communities in the planning, participation and process of deciding what council budgets are spent on. It comes not from the US or Scandinavia, or any of the usual sites of Western public policy innovation, but from Brazil.

It is called "participatory budgeting" (PB). And the idea is simple. Community groups work with council officers to decide local priorities and then present their proposals in front of a public audience, who vote on which projects to fund. Up and down the country thousands are now taking part, deciding how public money is spent.

"The response from communities has been fantastic," says Neil Smith, a policy officer at Newcastle city council, who this year used PB to allocate £60,000 to its cleaner, safer, greener communities programme and its scheme for children and young people. "It's transparent, and so avoids the myths about how money is being spent; it's quicker [voting at 'decision days' is done electronically and on the spot], and having been involved in the decision making, people feel better about themselves and their community."

It may sound too radical for some, and equivalent to giving away the keys of the town hall, but the World Bank, the UN, the EU and the UK's Department for International Development have all praised PB for its transparency and effectiveness, and Newcastle is not the only council piloting it in the UK. Leading the pack is the Bradford Vision local strategic partnership (which has used PB since 2004 to allocate £744,0000), and now Birmingham, Salford and Sunderland, as well as Manton Community Alliance and Mersey Partnership are experimenting with it.

It is no surprise that PB is being piloted in deprived areas, where councils are always on the lookout for ways to increase community participation and address the democratic deficit. And although the pilots are confined to the north, where the Participatory Budgeting Unit is restricted to working, interest has now spread to Lewisham, in south London, and Coedpoeth, in Wales.

With only a couple of years' experience at most, it is too early to judge PB's impact on the ground. But the feedback from communities is overwhelmingly positive. An evaluation of a recent decision day in Newcastle revealed that more than 70% of delegates thought PB was good for the neighbourhood, a good way of getting people involved, and would take part in a similar day again. What's more, it did not just attract the "same faces" as is too often the case with new initiatives. Forty per cent of those attending had not previously taken part in community events.

The results have not gone unnoticed by the Department for Communities and Local Government, as PB ties in with the government's agendas of active citizenship and involving people in service delivery. Indeed, the recent white paper on local government cites PB as an example of innovative practice giving local people more say in running local services.

There is plenty of interest in central government, confirms Kezia Lavan, who is evaluating PB with the non-governmental public action project at Bradford University. The challenge is getting the political will in councils to give up power and hand over budgets.

Perhaps it is no surprise therefore that, with the exception of Salford, the money allocated using PB has so far been confined only to regeneration. This is easier for communities to access, but means PB is not yet imbedded for the long term.

PB does not only give people a voice; there are spin-off benefits as well. As organisations have to present their proposals in front of other people, many of whom they know, there are suggestions that PB can result in higher quality applications. People are more honest about what their projects can deliver, and what it will cost. And links are made, and ideas swapped, between groups that otherwise may not have occurred. It is all thanks to the transparency of the funding process, which is normally done behind closed doors.

Decision days over, successful projects are invited to hand back some of their grant to help fund those that narrowly missed out - and some do. It is evidence of how PB can bring communities together and make people more aware of each other's needs - an ideal foundation for developing community strategies.

Newcastle and others are now reviewing their pilot experiences, and considering possible mainstreaming of PB. The only negative feedback has been that people wished more money had been at stake.

Robert Bullard is a writer and journalist

www.participatorybudgeting.org.uk
 

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