A new blog on the What Works Scotland website highlights the opportunities for stimulating and supporting social enterprise and so plug the leaking of public funding out of a community. Written by Jez Hall of PB Partners, the blog identifies the relationship between participatory budgeting and the recommendations of the Christie Commission, a report in… Read More
Themes
The central themes dealt with by Participatory Budgeting
Fund My Community: $1m dollar online PB launched by Government of South Australia
The Government of South Australia has launched a $1m online programme called ‘Fund My Community‘. That’s Australian dollars so about £500,000. The initiative is part of its ‘Your Say’ programme, and they have created a video to help promote the idea. Through Fund My Community, the Government of South Australian is using participatory budgeting to… Read More
Health in your hands: using participatory budgeting to tackle lung disease in Leicester
In March 2013, Leicester City clinical commissioning group made money available to fund local ideas to prevent or treat lung disease. The CCG invested £80,000 into the project, the first of its kind for a CCG. They wanted to prevent or treat COPD or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, commonly known as lung disease; an incurable… Read More
Rochdale Residents celebrate with another £47,000 of Our Choice funding
This spring Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) once again rolled out their award-winning “Our Choice” project, which gives residents control of how money is spent improving their neighbourhoods. £47,000 of funding to thirteen neighbourhoods was up for grabs and only local people could decide how it was spent. Since 2013 more than £120,000 has been distributed… Read More
Dereham goes interactive: the first text-voting PB programme in the UK?
‘InterACTIVE funding’ was part of a recent £50,000 Participatory Budgeting (PB) scheme across Breckland, Norfolk, delivered by local organisations in partnership with the Breckland Pride Board. Cllr Lynda Turner, Breckland Council Executive Member for Community and Environmental Services said: “This is a fantastic opportunity for clubs and organisations that just need a little funding to… Read More
Can participatory budgeting support a more open government?
At a meeting in early March 2015 of the OGP civil society network, Sue Ritchie, acting chair of the PB Network, posed the radical idea of 1% of all public expenditure being decided through an open, participatory democracy process , based on PB best practice around the world. This in turn stimulated a blog by Oliver… Read More
Due North Health Equity report recommends more participatory budgeting
Due North: The report of the Inquiry on Health Equity for the North, published last year, makes a number of important recommendations for reducing health inequalities base don expert witnesses and background research. The Inquiry was commissioned by Public Health England (PHE) and led by an independent panel of leading academics, policy makers and practitioners…. Read More
Levenshulme Market Fund: An innovation in grass-roots Participatory Budgeting
Levenshulme Market is a social enterprise based in Manchester, that has established a successful community market. It recently held what is probably the first social enterprise led and funded grassroots participatory grant making programme. Using funds generated from within the local community through hiring their market stalls to small businesses throughout the previous year. Money… Read More
Higher Folds We Decide: Police and community working together
A ‘hot off the press’ video of a recent Police led £20,000 participatory budgeting (PB) event on the Higher Folds estate, near Wigan. One part of a wider initiative that saw PB grant making projects take place across Greater Manchester in the winter of 2014/15. That altogether distributed well over £250,000 for community projects into… Read More
Online tools for Participatory Democracy
Nesta is a respected champion of innovation, new technology and online collaboration. As part of its series of ‘Tech4labs’ briefings it presents a helpful description of the differences between representative, direct and participatory democracy. As well as a review of a number of online platforms and tools for stimulating online deliberation, decision making and networking…. Read More