Four councils pilot community-based budgeting

Author: Sarah Townsend, Regen.net - Oct 6, 2010

Projects to get residents involved in spending decisions and in the design and operation of local services are being piloted in four council areas under a pilot scheme being led by the coalition Government's Big Society adviser Lord Wei.

Speaking to Regeneration & Renewal at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Lord Wei said that four councils had been piloting "community-based budgeting" – an initiative based on Labour’s participatory budgeting model – over the past few months since the election.

Lord Wei said that the pilots, which are being carried out in Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council, Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council, Cheshire West and Chester Council and the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames, expand on the participatory budgeting model as they involved getting residents involved in designing and running local public services as well as pooling budgets at community level and working out spending priorities. The pilots are based on social enterprise Turning Point’s local integrated services (LIS) model, he said.

Participatory budgeting aims to give local residents and communities a greater say over how local authorities spend money in their neighbourhood.

At a separate event that took place during the conference, decentralisation minister Greg Clark gave a strong indication that the forthcoming Localism and Decentralisation Bill will contain legislation that will make it easier for councils to introduce community-based budgeting.

He said: "I am not at liberty to disclose exactly what the bill contains, but I can say that it will mark a major step forward with regard community-based budgeting."

Meanwhile, at the same event, local government think-tank Localis launched a new report that called for the introduction of "place-based" budgeting as a way of empowering local communities and delivering better, and cheaper, public services.

The report, 'Total Neighbourhood: Placing power back into the community', can be viewed here.

To read the original article please click here