Participatory budgeting: New challenges, same principles

Participatory budgeting (PB) has come a long way in Scotland. From early local initiatives that helped to pioneer the approach, to funding that saw it delivered across the country - from grants events in local communities, to mainstream PB across local authorities. 

Throughout this journey, we've seen how transformative people making decisions about how money is spent can be.

In this time, PB has also faced some significant challenges. The pandemic put a halt to face-to-face PB activity in many communities - and while online engagement and voting helped PB continue, we're still catching up with the lost momentum.

New challenges

Now, as the effects of the pandemic still linger, Scotland is facing new challenges around funding and sustainability.

When 'budgeting' becomes so contentious, and for many organisations about whether they can keep their doors open, it's no wonder PB might struggle in an environment where funding is so stretched.

With decisions so difficult, and the support so essential, it can lead us to ask the question: where does participatory budgeting fit in?

First principles

And yet, despite these significant challenges, we can go back to some of the basic principles of PB:

• That people can offer valuable knowledge when they help make decisions about the issues important to them.

• That discussion and deliberation about how budgets are spent can help to bring new, innovate ideas to the surface.

• That decisions, even difficult ones, are better made through meaningful engagement and participation.

Understanding the environment

To help us understand these challenges, and find out from you where support would be best placed, we've developed a short survey to capture some of your thoughts.

With more than 1,700 members of the PB Scotland Network together we have the collective knowledge and ideas to help support PB, and each other.

We're already in contact with some of you, and will be bringing your survey responses together over the coming weeks.

PB and Community Led Local Development Funding

A short case study from the Outer Hebrides Community Led Local Development Local Action Group

Authors: Mira Byrne, Community Led Local Development Coordinator and Dawn Brown

In 2023, PB Scotland were delighted to learn that the Outer Hebrides Community Led Local Development Local Action Group (CLLD LAG) were exploring the use of PB as a means of distributing some of their funding.

CLLD is a Scottish Government scheme that builds on the legacy of the Scottish Government and European funded rural LEADER programme and is administered in 20 rural areas via Local Action Groups. Please see the Scottish Rural Network article here for more information on CLLD.

The Outer Hebrides LAG chose to make £25,000 of their allocation available as small grants funding for local organisations to bid into, with a maximum request of £2,500.

The press release at the time of launch stated:

“In a first for the OH CLLD LAG, this fund will trial Participatory Budgeting (PB) to award funding. This means that the LAG will only check applications for eligibility and all projects found to be eligible will then proceed to a public vote. Funding will then be awarded starting with the project that received the most votes until the full budget has been allocated, making the fund truly community-led.”

The specific criteria for applications were developed by the LAG to fit criteria set by the Scottish Government and to meet local needs.

The LAG requested that to apply, projects must evidence that they:

• have a community benefit

• benefit their local area;

• are achievable within the set timescale;

• advance inclusion, equality and diversity; and

• align with at least one of the following Scottish Government CLLD priorities for 2023/24:

  • Helping families and services through the cost-of-living crisis;

  • Eradicating child poverty; and

  • Transforming the economy to deliver Net Zero.

As with many funds, there was a challenge for the timeline, as all allocated monies required to be spent and activity completed by 31st March 2024.

Planning

Initially, as is often the case for a new approach, the number of applications were lower than hoped for, and the deadline for applications was extended. At the extended closing date, the LAG had enough applications for a competitive PB process to go to a public vote, with 20 projects and a total request of almost £38,000 passing the initial scrutiny.

The public vote dates were advertised, taking account of dates that might impact voter numbers such as school holidays and the Royal National Mòd. Due to the huge geographic area covered by Outer Hebrides CLLD and the rural nature of the islands, the public vote was held exclusively online. Due to their good working relationship with Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (the Comhairle), the Local Authority, the LAG were lucky to be able to avail themselves of the Comhairle’s IT systems, which enabled them to set up an online page to advertise projects and collated votes as they came in. Once all the parameters had been agreed and systems put in place, the fund was widely advertised via press releases, emails, social media posts and even a short interview on Radio nan Gàidheal.

Voting

Voting was a huge success with just short of 2,000 votes cast. However, the LAG faced a serious challenge just as everything seemed on track, as the Comhairle became victim of a cyber attack in November 2023, the weekend the voting closed. Taking a pragmatic approach, the LAG agreed to use the last-downloaded information so as not to impact too heavily on delivery timelines. Ultimately, there were 11 projects successful in securing funding. The successful projects were themed around befriending, meals on wheels, youth, community activities, older people and bring-the-whole-community-together ceilidhs and celebrations.

Feedback

Feedback from groups was very positive and several enquiries have since been received about future rounds of the Small Grants Scheme. Even applicants who fell short during the vote were very accepting, often pointing to their lack of advertising and active engagement as a reason for the low number of votes received. LAG members, several of whom had expressed doubts during the early discussions about PB, were impressed by the process and reassured that it led to fair outcomes.

There was no evidence of groups in larger settlements or with a large number of supporters faring better than their smaller, more remote counterparts, possibly due to employing scatter voting which meant that each voter had to cast five votes.

Indeed, the LAG are so excited about the outcome and the truly community-led element this introduced to their programme, that they are considering using PB again to allocate some of this year’s funds and definitely intend to build it into future programmes.

For further information on future rounds and developments click here.

Two people playing indoor badminton

A group of children dressed up in Santa outfits taking part in a Santa dash on a beach

Three people carrying out garden / outdoor tasks

Funding event - Challenges in accessing funding

Notes from a workshop as part of the the March 20 2024 PB Learning Event on Funding

Challenges:            

• Challenges include – fairness in voting; using appropriate and varied engagement and voting methods 

• Support for PB processes needs to be proportionate 

• A reduction in youth focused PB projects has been identified in recent years.  Whilst activity had picked up following the pandemic in 2021, it is not considered to be near the activity previously experienced and pots of funding for youth PB seem to be declining.   

• It was noted that other types of PB are gaining traction (Green PB) however the risk of equity was identified here in that access to funding is becoming more akin to themes that are “flavour of the month” rather than equitable across all sectors.   

• Access to PB needs to grow year on year for all different sectors for it to continue to gain traction and strengthen democracy across the country.   

• There is also a risk that keeping PB at small local levels (small community pots of funding) can be seen a placating citizens but not giving them any real power over bigger decisions. 

• Knowledge of PB and adequate capacity resourcing for processes was also identified as something that needs to be addressed and supported.  More people need to know about PB and have the ability and opportunity to participate in a range (and graduating scale) of projects.  

• PB has costs beyond the grants – administering the grant takes time and effort too. Funders are often happy to meet the costs of funding to disperse, but there are associated costs with running the process – like information and voting events, community conversations and the cost of buying technology to support greener voting methods – by using tablets etc. 

• Although have had funding for last 14 year for PB still feels like there’s a risk to getting the funding each year 

• Restrictions set by funder on what money can be spent on can be frustrating and restrict what groups can apply for. e.g. one example where monies can’t be spent on staffing costs 

• Difficulty with current budget cuts - PB can be seen as just getting communities to choose cuts (this isn’t PB but called PB) 

• Expectation that groups/staff will do all the support/development work which is involved in participatory consultation/PB processes without acknowledgement that these are complicated and skilled tasks 

Opportunities:

• Hyper local approach to PB works well 

• PB is an approach to funding that is flexible, responsive and transparent – importance of relationships with fundholders – whose money is it and what is it used for? 

• Opportunities include – achieving good reach through existing (anchor) groups such as Community Councils; not being afraid to be different and take some risks 

• Participants felt that more and more PB should be introduced at all fund levels – not just small community pots but at community, locality, authority and national levels.  People should have the ability to be involved in spending decisions right through finance levels. 

• We discussed weighted voting and allocation methods to support smaller organisations and those from the equalities community to be successful when they don’t have the supporter numbers behind them. Leith Decides have used a “bonus vote” that can only be used on certain projects, and it was used by over 80% of voters. Others have used income ceilings and paid staff as a marker as a benchmark for funding allocations (those with higher incomes and paid development staff only being eligible for a percentage of the funding pot) 

• Encouraged to see in some examples of applications how organisations had worked together and bids were complementary to each other – example of how process had encouraged partnerships between organisations

• In other communities there were examples of how PB had created competition/rivalry between organisations – group running this process had countered this through an in person engagement day which enabled groups in the community to get together with those running the PB activity to improve and simplify the processes to improve engagement 

• Groups identified funding and resources to properly engage communities in developing and designing the process as well as running and administering the process and grants were the most difficult to access and where they had them were not enough to do it as well as they would want 

Funding event - Housing

Notes from the housing workshop of the March 20 2024 PB Learning Event on Funding:

• Fiona spoke about Ardenglen’s PB work focusing on child poverty/food poverty. Their role as a landlord gave them a real insight into the lives and circumstances of their tenants (and their families).

• Worked with local schools (a budget of £10k each to explore the Cost of a School Day) to set up the Your School You Decide PB programme – there was great participation and a wide range of outcomes achieved.

• Have since been continually looking for more opportunities to do PB including tying in PB to existing projects e.g. Food Pantry – Cash for Castlemilk. Have seen the broader benefits of increased participation based on improved relationships. There has been a big focus on evaluation – constantly learning from what they’ve done and the impacts of the work.

• Evaluation is a requirement from funders but is also essential to good practice. PB funding in a housing context can focus on: social development and support; tenant participation; and tenancy sustainment (all linking to increased confidence and individual capacity). 

• Challenges – funding bodies need to be more aware of what PB is and what it can achieve; we still need to be better at ensuring there is wider access to PB funds (not just the higher capacity groups who are good at ‘grant hoovering’) 

• Opportunities – community benefit funds – not just renewables but also construction companies; much more of a pragmatic and collaborative approach to local funding 

Funding event - Education

Notes from the funding workshop of the March 20 2024 PB Learning Event on Funding:

Breakout – PB in Education 

Involving target group for PB process right from the very beginning through consultation and involvement was really important to a successful process 

• It’s important to have a variety of ways to vote – online ( eg Engage Stirling and Young Scot)  - and in person/physical voting slips

• Working with key partners – CLD and youth services is crucial – to reaching young people and families in the community, not just a school setting  

• PB is an important tool to enable participation in decision making and democracy – a means to an end not an end in itself.  PB results in so much more than just allocating budgets

• PB was a powerful tool which resulted in better ideas for the budget spend than teachers would have come up with and stronger partnerships to deliver the projects – this was achieved through the investment of time in building relationships and inclusions and involvement of partners within the process itself

• PB can feel like it’s on a shoogly peg – carrot and stick are important to keep it on the agenda 

• It can be difficult to engage with young people in PB from a community perspective and it is important to ensure young people were able to take part in community PB processes 

• Schools are busy, Headteachers are busy – it's important to make it easy for schools to engage in a PB process – support of CD Workers/Youth Workers to make that happen and support engagement processes is crucial.   

• Resourcing community development support to build capacity of all partners to engage in a process and involving the community right from the beginning is important to a successful process but this is the part of PB that is most difficult to resource/fund 

Funding event - Health and social care

Notes from the East Ayrshire Heath and Social Care Partnership workshop at the March 20 2024 PB Learning event on funding

• Important to have online and in person voting to increase the number of votes but also to retain the networking, information sharing and visibility of PB 

• There was constant promoting of the fund to ensure the community came forward with project ideas, they also built on previous years.  A continuous rolling programme of PB ensures maximum community involvement and understanding. 

• Group discussed how to bring on board Senior Manages and elected reps to PB – it's important to demonstrate the impact of the PB process so evaluation is key. 

• The group discussed the importance of having other funding opportunities beyond PB so that groups that are unsuccessful in the PB process have other routes to discuss their project ideas. 

• It is important to have community development workers out there in the community supporting community steering groups, building the knowledge, skills and confidence of community activists to get involved.   

Funding event - environment workshop

Notes from the environment workshop of the March 20 2024 PB Learning Event on Funding:

• We had a wealth of experienced PB-ers in the room, so were able to listen to their good practice examples specifically from Dundee (Climate Fund), JTNE (Just Transition PB Fund), Perth & Kinross (Green Living Fund) and Edinburgh (Community Climate Fund). 

• Discussion on a pragmatic approach to PB – it’s never perfect, but we learn each time. 

• There was a discussion on the support for community groups to apply – particularly around supporting groups to consider durability and lifespan of products as well as cost.  An example of polytunnels was given where a group were supported to apply for a more expensive, but more durable version, rather than the version that would be damaged at the first strong wind. 

• Voting was discussed here as well, with acknowledgement that paper voting is needed – but it is about responsible paper voting – using recycled paper, ensuring that paper is recycled after the event, printing minimal amounts of information, and paper as a last resort. 

• Again, the costs of this ongoing engagement was raised – that it costs staff and volunteer time and resources to go out and host engagement and voting events, but that it was a worthwhile investment – but it would be good if funding was allocated to support the process in recognition of the amount of work a successful process needs. 

• The variety of projects being funded is diversifying as well, so it’s not just about pieces of battery powered equipment, but about things like tool libraries, cargo bikes, polytunnels, community growing, cycle repair and reuse, as well as better insulation for buildings, and where necessary, electric vehicles. 

• The climate conscious funding and behavior change is still new in our communities, so this is seen as a gentle and engaging way to support that approach to having the conversations that lead to individual and collective change for the benefit of the environment. 

• Challenges around funding were briefly discussed.  Most green PB activity referenced during the breakout had been funded directly through Scottish Government or Local Authorities – some additionality (and match funding) had been experienced – it was felt that this is an area that could be explored in the future.   

• Finally, restrictions in timebound spend for funds was highlighted as a particular challenge – participants indicated that applications to significant national funds (SG Climate Fund) had previously been unsuccessful as full spend (rather only dissemination to successful projects) could not be achieved within the financial year.