Participatory Budgeting Network Booklet September 2015

Participatory Budgeting (PB) empowers communities, gets more people involved in democracy and improves local public services. It has a proven track record of increasing levels of participation, engagement and empowerment in a range of community settings. Major developments such as devolved Community Budgets, elected Police Commissioners and the establishment of NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups all cry out for effective ways of letting local people have an input on spending priorities.

PB has been evolving in the UK since 2000, when a delegation of community activists from Salford and Manchester visited Brazil to understand how PB works and how it might be implemented in the UK.

PB was first introduced in the city of Porto Alegre inBrazil, in 1989 when public funds were very restricted and demands for democratic reform were strong. Since then it has successfully empowered people in extremely deprived communities. Its tools and principles are now used in many places across the world. There are over 2000 cities worldwide using PB, the list includes UK, USA, Canada, Spain, France and Germany. It is recognized as good practice by international institutions, including the World Bank,UNESCO, OECD, the UN and DFID.

It is important to remember that PB is not about giving away power or reducing the influence of elected politicians. It is about sharing responsibility more widely. Only a fixed and relatively small amount of total public spending is opened up to public decision making through PB. But often they are the funds most important to local people, and trusting citizens can have a big impact on their respect for and engagement with representative democracy.