Housing Associations, Cooperatives, Tenant and Arm’s Length Management Organisations are uniquely well placed to initiate and lead participatory budgeting (PB), as they often already have well structured tenant engagement processes, and much of their income comes directly from rents.
PB is an ideal way to take that engagement further, and respond to the interests, concerns and needs of their residents and the wider community.
This paper, produced by PB partners and released in March 2019 argues that PB helps build trust and enables better conversations across many of these themes. Tenants need to be given genuine choices as to what existing rents are spent on, what is ‘affordable’ and also how any increases might be spent.
‘The (PB) funding has allowed our tenants and residents to address the issues most important to them. All our PB projects have generated a great deal of interest in local areas where engagement with the Council has previously been low’.
We believe this will be a useful introduction for all social housing providers wishing to engage with tenants and their wider community through the best practice in PB.
If you would like further information, or wish to start a PB project please contact PB Partners for further help and advice.
Download the full Participatory Budgeting within Social Housing report here.