About the Participatory Budget Unit

The PB Unit is a project of the charity Church Action on Poverty (Charity no. 1079986, Company no. 3780243), based in Manchester.

Church Action on Poverty has been in action for over 25 years, since 1982, and is working to eradicate poverty in the UK.

We are part-funded by the Department for Communities and Local Government to support the rolling out of PB in England.

The PB Unit supports Church Action on Poverty's key aim of "Giving a voice to people in poverty".  The PB Unit is aware that PB can be used by anyone, and isn't solely a mechanism for poor people, however, the PB Unit feels that those people living in poverty require greater access to public services than other groups of people.  They have far greater need for their voices to be heard and for services to be responsive to their needs as those services may be the way out of poverty for them.

However, we do believe that everyone has the right to access good public services and the right to be heard.

Within that overall aim, the PB Unit's key aim is for "People in poverty to have more control over the quality of services delivered in their own communities and neighbourhoods."

We have a number of aims and objectives which support this aim.  These are:

• That more people will have more direct control over public budgets
  
• Building capacity in communities and the third sector
• Empowering people to take ownership of their areas
• Involving more people in democratic processes
• Promoting active citizens - not passive customers
• Developing a more mature dialogue between public bodies and communities
• Increasing social cohesion
  
• Promoting ongoing 'bottom up' grassroots impetus for PB
• Increasing transparency around public spending