Ideas: Citizens determine spending

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Ideas: Citizens determine spending

26.11.2009 // by Guest

This idea comes from Stephen Whitehead at the New Economics Foundation:

What's the big idea?:

Central government should award all local authorities a pot of money to be allocated via a process of participatory budgeting.

Participatory budgeting is a simple idea - it just means inviting citizens to make decisions on the spending and priorities for a pot of money in their area. Participatory budgeting asks people to come together to make real choices about what matters to them in their local community.

Why is this change important to you?:

By giving local people the opportunity to come together to take meaningful political decisions, we can help them develop into communities of politically engaged, confident citizens who have the skills and resources to work together to achieve shared goals like carbon reduction or tackling social problems, and to hold local and national government to account.

There is a caveat, though. In the UK, only a few areas have so far experimented with participatory budgeting and in some of them the amounts involved are very small. This can be counter productive. If local authorities want citizens to invest their time in engaging these processes, they need to offer the opportunity to make a substantial input. Otherwise, we risk creating another empty form of participation which does more to alienate people.

By ensuring that local authorities across the country have access to funding to run meaningful participation, we can create the opportunity for a real democratic flourishing in communities across the UK.