The city council has just ran a training programme on Participatory Budgeting (PB) where third sector organisations and community councils were encouraged to get involved and produce their own ‘PB Champions’.
What is PB? Participatory Budgeting is a process whereby local people can have a direct influence on how public money is spent in their area. It’s a relatively new type of participatory democracy, where local communities set priorities and make decisions.
Part of the Scottish Government’s commitment to community empowerment and social justice, participatory budgeting is becoming increasingly important and Holyrood will allocate 1% of their entire budget to PB initiatives by 2020.
Councils across the country will be tasked to make this work.
Now 1% may not sound like much, but 1% of a £ multi-million budget is a substantial amount of money – and for most community councils, for whom their only previous experience of managing budgets has been discussions over community grants or environment projects at Neighbourhood Partnership meetings, it promises to be a major step forward. But is it?
Edinburgh does have some experience of PB. South West Edinburgh conducted a Health Matters PB initiative in December 2016 and Leith ran the Leith Decides event (currently being repeated as £eith Chooses) last year.
The city council also held a Youth Decides PB event last year and is now doing it all over again through the Choose Youth Work: The Big Vote which takes place this month. Police Scotland also ran a PB initiative to allocate funds to projects tackling Islamophobia, ‘Shared Vision, Your Decision’ which attracted 2500 votes.
Locally, Old Kirk Muirhouse Parish Church also ran a successful PB initiative last Spring and local minister Steve Ashley-Emery was very enthusiastic about the process which brought community groups and individuals together. Spurred on by that positive experience the church is repeating the PB exercise this month, with £4500 set to be allocated to local initiatives.
While PB has it’s enthusiastic supporters, there are also critics of a system which some see as a ‘beauty contest’. In a competition between a project that supports children’s activities and one that assists ex-offenders or refugee groups, it isn’t difficult to forecast which will top the poll.
Some argue too that PB is tokenistic, with small pockets of funding available for cosmetic change while larger community problems go unresolved. There can also be a problem with low voter turnouts at PB events, enabling some enterprising organisations to take advantage.
With a growing experience of PB, Edinburgh must use the knowledge gained – both positive and negative – to ensure that PB can work successfully for communities across the city.
There are still many unknowns: how much money will be allocated to the various Localities for PB activities (if that is how it is to work), exactly what will local people be asked to vote on and exactly what support will be available for community organisations to help run PB projects. With council budgets already under extreme pressure it’s unlikely there will be any new money or additional resources made available for PB initiatives.
Perhaps the relative novelty of PB, with it’s enhanced role for communities in decision-making, will be incentive enough to encourage community representatives to support the process. Or will PB be seen as just another way of slicing up an ever-smaller cake?
As they said: your vision, your decision. Communities, it’s over to you.
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