PB in Action: Fife

PB Scotland is featuring a series of updates from Scottish local authorities who have been supported to engage in PB activity by the Scottish Government.  The Scottish Government is part-funding PB consultancy support delivered by PB Partners during 2015/16 to twenty local authorities across Scotland signed up for PB activity in their area.

Since an initial exercise in Glenrothes in 2010 called Community GAINS, Fife Council (FC) has run a number of PB events, hosted the first Scotland-wide PB Conference and engaged with other local authorities to promote the approach. More recently, Coalfields Regeneration Trust (CRT) has run a series of ‘Futures’ PB events in former mining areas of Fife with a twofold aim – to grant fund local initiatives via a small pot of money (£20k-£30k depending on the size of the community); and to work with local people to put together a Five-year Local Action Plan.  All of this together has resulted in over 20 PB events taking place across Fife with almost £500k devolved to local communities to spend on their priorities.

The ambition now is to ramp up PB activity and to link it to both Local Community Plans and wider budget consultation exercises.  To this end we have procured support from ScotGov by way of input from PB Partners.  This support was launched via a scoping meeting involving FC representatives and colleagues from CRT and Fife Voluntary Action.  The next event was a study visit to Durham County Council to learn about their Area Action Partnerships which utilise PB to engage their local communities.  This strategy has resulted in 11,000 people taking part in their most recent budget consultation exercise.  Cllrs Tom Adams, Chair of Levenmouth Area Committee, and Kay Carrington, Vice Chair of Kirkcaldy Area Committee, took part in the visit and they are keen to see the approach embedded at both Area level and Fife-wide.

The next steps will see a series of Area-based workshops around PB and the development of a cohesive governance framework which will drive PB across Fife and embed it in our approach to Local Community Planning.

You can download 'KnowHow - guidance for research and evaluation in Fife', which provides a useful background on PB, here.

For more information contact Kevin Sayer: Kevin.Sayer@fife.gov.uk.