Communities and neighbourhoods

Participatory Budgeting

Local people in town centre Participatory Budgeting goes beyond consultation with local people to give them a direct say in deciding how part of a public budget is spent. This helps tailor services closer to local needs, giving people more ownership of their community. Residents and community groups representative of all parts of the community are engaged in debating the merits of various spending proposals. Local people can vote on these proposals, and can have a role in scrutinising and monitoring the process.

Participatory Budgeting can encourage local people to take more of an active part in shaping their local community consistent with local priorities and helping create the Big Society. It also has the potential to involve people in the commissioning, design and delivery of services.

Participatory Budgeting has proved a good way to:

achieve decisions better tailored to local needs
engender greater understanding of the complexities of public budgeting and increase transparency and accountability of public budgets
develop residents' and organisations' skills and confidence to tackle neighbourhood issues
bring people together from different backgrounds within an area
local councillors and council officials to work better with residents
galvanize further involvement in activities in the local neighbourhood.

Participatory Budgeting in action

Around 120 Participatory Budgeting schemes have been undertaken in England within half of the top level of local authority areas.

Local people have directly influenced spending decisions via Participatory Budgeting on a variety of budgets.

They include:

community policing
children's services
tenant management organisations
community health
Fire and Rescue Service.

Participatory Budgeting could provide a stepping stone to more formal community involvement in budgetary decisions and local service decisions, such as community and neighbourhood budgets.

The Government funds the Participatory Budgeting Unit, a project of the registered charity, Church Action on Poverty, to promote, support and develop Participatory Budgeting across England. For more information, including examples of Participatory Budgeting projects and advice and contacts to help doing Participatory Budgeting visit the website (see link right).

The Big Society Network, an independent organisation, along with the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA), worked with the Participatory Budgeting Unit on the Network's Your Local Budget project. This project worked with nine pioneer areas to test innovative ways of engaging with local people on budgets in the context of reduced local authority spending and the move towards the Big Society. (For more details see link right.)

Baroness Newlove appeared on ITV's Tonight programme in June 2011 with residents from an estate in Stockport. She promoted the positive impacts of Participatory Budgeting in the area. For more details visit the ITV website (see link right).

In September 2011 the Department published the phase 2 national evaluation of Participatory Budgeting - Communities in the driving seat: a study of Participatory Budgeting in England - Final Report (see 'Related publications', below). This report examines Participatory Budgeting projects in England and provides evidence on good practice from the areas involved in the research and practical tools to help undertake Participatory Budgeting. It shows some of the ways Participatory Budgeting can encourage localism and build the Big Society by devolving decisions down to a lower and more local level. It is very relevant to local public agencies and local leaders who are involved in community engagement and in promoting the devolution of power.