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P A R T I C I P A T O R Y B U D G E T S

Communities will be empowered topush for a greater say in howtaxpayers cash is spent in acampaign that kicks off this week.

Over the coming months, a seriesof workshops will take place intowns across the country, aimed athelping locals win more involvementin setting the funding agenda in theirareas. The first event takes place inSt Helens on 29 September.

The Peoples Budget campaign,co-ordinated by the charity ChurchAction on Poverty, is designed toincrease the use of participatorybudgeting a movement thatemerged in the Brazilian city of PortoAlegre more than 20 years ago.

The approach sees public bodiesset aside sums of money andresidents invited to vote on where itshould be spent. A number ofschemes have been set up in the UKsince the then Labour governmentlaunched a national participatorybudgeting strategy in 2006, but thisnew campaign aims to bring its useinto the political mainstream.

In Porto Alegre, residents helpedallocate 18 per cent of city budgetsbut Church Action on PovertysParticipatory Budgeting Unit (PBU)

has more modest aims: a goal ofcontrolling 1 per cent of councilfunds is deemed a manageable placeto start.

Campaign co-ordinator AlanThornton says: Billions of pounds of

our money isbeing used bypublic bodieswithout anyinvolvement oflocal people but,now more thanever whenmassive cuts arebeing made,ordinary peopleshould have a

say in deciding how taxpayersmoney is being spent.

A few councils and public bodieshave been excellent at givingresidents a say but there are stillmassive deserts where ordinarypeople have little or no voice. Webelieve participatory budgeting isdemocratic, increases transparencyand trust in public bodies and drawspeople together.

In Brazil it was found to havequite a transformative effect ondealing with poverty and the gap

between rich and poor was narrowed.We think more communities in thiscountry should push for this.

More than 150 communities haveexperienced participatory budgetingin Britain, helping to channel funds

from organisations such as parishcouncils, housing associations andpolice authorities into their preferredprojects. To be most effective theapproach must work on a rollingbasis, giving local people the chanceto evaluate how the money was usedwhen they decide the next budget.

Notable examples includeLondons Tower Hamlets borough,where over 2.4 million a year wasspent in 2009 and 2010, including150,000 decided by young people

THE BRAZILIAN EXPERIENCE

Participatory budgeting came from thegrassroots. In 1980 when Brazil was stillliving under a military dictatorship community organisations in the city ofPorto Alegre came together to demandpopular involvement in local budgeting. Ittook another decade and a Workers Partyelection win to get the programmeproperly up and running. In 1990 fewerthan than 1,000 people were participatingbut by 2003 26,000 residents were votingon almost a fifth of municipal budgets.World Bank research suggests theresulting direct improvements includesewer and water connections beingextended to 98 per cent of households by1997 and a quadrupling in schoolnumbers since 1986.

An experiment getting underway in St Helens this week aims to give

local people more control over how taxpayers money is spent in

their area. Ciara Leeming reports on participatory budgeting, which

started in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre

Participatorybudgeting isdemocraticand increasestransparencyand trust inpublicbodies.

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1326 SEPTEMBER - 2 OCTOBER 2011 THE BIG ISSUE IN THE NORTH

H O M E L E S S N E S S

through their school councils.In the north, residents of Eastfield

in Scarborough recently took part intheir third participatory budget,allocating 18,000 to localcommunity projects. Experiments

have also taken place in Merseyside,Greater Manchester and Cheshire,often with the support of the PBU.

Although it cannot overcomewider issues such as employment,participatory budgeting at its best canlead to improvements in theaccessibility and quality of services

and publicwelfareamenities.

Sheffield EastMP Clive Betts,chair of theparliamentarycommittee oncommunitiesand localgovernment, is asupporter.

Writing in the Yorkshire Postin June,he said: Elections and referendumsshould not be the only way forresidents to have their say, andcouncils themselves have to put moreeffort into the ways they listen andrespond to the public.

Some local authorities alreadyhave ways of asking their residents tomake decisions about how resourcesare allocated in their neighbourhood,such as community councils withsmall budgets attached, orparticipatory budgeting events. Theseideas are along the right lines but not

The Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, where participatory budgeting began. Photo: Ricardo Andr Frantz

PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING IS A GREAT LEVELLER

Children as young as eight have beengiven a say in how funds are spent inEastfield. The areas pilot project tookplace in 2009, when the police authority,

North Yorkshire County Council andScarborough Borough Council made32,000 available for projects addressingcrime and community safety issues.

Since then the money has dropped to10,000 in 2010 and 18,000 this year,but local enthusiasm persists.Beneficiaries include a pensionersluncheon club and youth initiatives.

A number of residents sit on theparticipatory budgeting steering group,alongside councillors and police figures.The panel sets the date of the publicmeeting and sends out notices to localhouseholds. Votes are counted in front ofthe audience, ensuring the process iscompletely transparent.

Steering group chair Chris Parsons says:It works well here and we would like to

see more of it. Early on, some officialstried to direct how the scheme wouldwork here but we knew participatorybudgeting should come from the ground

up. Residents stood their ground and wecame to a good understanding of howthings should work in Eastfield.

We have found that participatorybudgeting is a great leveller. Weve noticedthat local groups seem to win more votesfor funding than projects run by biggerorganisations. Some projects have beenfunded year on year so they aredelivering. I think people like it becausethey can see democracy being done, andwe get involvement from across theestate.

To start with some of the councillorswere a bit worried that participatorybudgeting would take their power awaybut actually they have become moreempowered because they are doing whatlocal people want.

Deprivedcommunitiesshould not beinvisible in the

decisions ofhow publicmoney isspent.

nearly ambitious or widespreadenough.

This week in St Helens, and inthe nine subsequent workshops,community groups will be taughtabout participatory budgeting and

encouraged to lobby for change.Thornton believes groups will bemore difficult for public bodies toignore than individual residents.

He says: The government ismaking much of its localism and bigsociety agendas and we are arguingthat they should therefore give us a

meaningful say in how our taxesare spent.

A vote every few years isntenough a healthy democracyshould be much more participatory but this means more than

consultation exercises.Marginalised and deprived

communities should not be forgottenor invisible in the decisions of howpublic money is spent. If we are tohave genuine localism, we need localpeople to have a voice in decisionssuch as these.

democracy?democracy?