This is partly to do with initiatives feeling they need to demonstrate the value of PB to sceptics (especially in uncertain financial and political times) in order to be more sustainable and partly because of the national evaluation being done by SQW.

Most PB initiatives now produce some kind of evaluation, although the focus, quality and type vary significantly.  However, initial outcomes are emerging, providing some interesting data. 

Evaluation is certainly something that we, at the PB Unit, have been thinking about and working on for a while now too.  Local evaluations seemed to be so different from each other that it was impossible to develop any kind of comparison for a national picture.  We also knew that because there’s no requirement on initiatives to do any kind of evaluation that anything we produced for people to complete and return to us had to be something that was also useful and helpful for them.

So over quite a long period of time, and after asking a number of different stakeholders, we, with Heather Blakey at ICPS, started to develop an approach to developing meaningful evaluation locally, with the resources available.  We’re currently testing this and the tools we developed with initiatives, to see if it works.  The purpose of the approach is to enable initiatives to develop their own evaluation framework that’s relevant to their local context, whilst still providing a level of information to the PB Unit that could be comparable across areas.  But its primary focus is developing a local evaluation. 

Entirely separate to this, CLG decided to do a national evaluation and commissioned SQW to do it.  SQW are now about to publish their interim report which provides the baseline, which they’ll build upon and look at changes over time in the next phase.  SQW developed a logic framework for the evaluation, and the primary focus of their tools is comparison data, which is what’s needed for a national evaluation, however, it makes the tools less useful in isolation, locally.  The evaluation, will, hopefully, provide a national snapshot of PB and identify some of the emerging outcomes and areas for improvement. 

In yet another project, Involve are looking at the business case for different participation activities.  They are researching costs and benefits in a fairly broad approach to demonstrate the value of participation.  This research is just starting but has the potential to be quite useful both locally and nationally to make the case for PB.  Similarly Community Development Foundation are putting together research on the value of empowerment and making the case for empowerment. 

We definitely welcome the evaluation activities that are going on and hope that our own contribution is helpful and welcome locally as well as nationally.  Robust and meaningful evaluation that demonstrates the value of PB is something that is most definitely needed, especially in the current economic climate. 

It’s not that I thought that PB was the same around the world – in fact, we often talk about PB being different in the UK from the rest of Europe.  This is largely to do with the reasons why PB was brought to the UK, and who was involved.  And of course, our highly centralised state which limits the amount of say that people can have over budgets locally. 

I don’t know whether it was the language barrier (I don’t speak any German at all, and most of the German speakers there seemed to know limited English) or things lost in translation; but it seemed at times that we were talking about completely different PB.  And then I realised, that PB in Germany is very different from PB in the UK.  We both thought we were talking about the same thing – PB – but it turns out we were talking about different processes entirely which are implemented for entirely different reasons.  This then became a theme, for me, for the conference.

German PB, seems to me to be a more elaborate form of budget consultation.  And it’s done for the purpose of service modernisation.  So because empowerment is not a key objective, who participates and how is less of an issue.  But using the internet for PB is key, because it’s about modernisation and engaging with people in setting budget priorities is a way of modernising services.   If you engage people online, they can engage in a way and a time that suits them – is their rationale.  When I talked about engaging with different ‘hard to reach’ groups by utilising community leaders and existing local networks (for example asking mosque leaders to promote PB to their followers, and using Muslim women’s groups to target women), there was an obvious gasp around the room.  It seems like common sense to us, but to them, it was a completely new idea because it is not their raison d’etre for PB. 

German PB does not involve any decision making on the part of residents.  All views are taken to the local councillors and they make the decision, taking the results of the consultation exercise into consideration.  Which is why I think it’s what we’d call budget consultation.

There was Ernesto Ganuza from Spain talking about PB in Seville too.  The focus of their PB is on poverty alleviation by the redistribution of wealth to poorer people and neighbourhoods.  They use social justice criteria to frame their deliberations about priorities and projects.  The process they follow, however, is very similar to the Porto Alegre model.  This kind of model is something that we can more readily understand in the UK as poverty alleviation – or reducing deprivation – is something that is important to us too, and models that look at allocating mainstream funding for mainstream services is the direction PB seems to be heading here. 

The conference also heard from George Matovu from Uganda, although he was representing PB across Africa.  In Africa (it seems wrong to talk about an entire continent in this way, but this is how he put it) their focus is much more on government transparency, fighting corruption within government and creating greater equality through gender budgeting.  Their processes are designed to address these issues rather than empowerment per se.  Whilst we would agree with these sentiments the issues of corruption and gender inequality are not the same in the UK as they are in Africa. 

All of this left me thinking – if PB is so different in different countries – there are different processes implemented for entirely different (although not always uncomplimentary) reasons – at what point does it stop being PB?  Or if it’s all PB how do you differentiate between the different approaches and purposes so that you’re not left feeling like it’s all lost in translation?

In the end I came full circle, and realised, that PB has to be adapted to local circumstance and local need.  Rather than wondering what is and isn’t PB, we should be looking at other PB processes and other purposes such as greater government transparency, or whether the funding allocated is fairly distributed either to those most in need or across the community as a whole?  Maybe PB has greater potential than is currently realised and perhaps we shouldn’t be so focussed on what we do now that we miss the opportunities to do more.   

Probably it’s also sense that a phoney war is on, as we head towards a May election. This brings its challenges as so much seems to be in holding mode. New policies like the Sustainable Communities Act seem to be on hold or just out of reach, though it has some life as a private members bill. There is despondency around in a lot of organisations supporting community empowerment too, about possible public sector cuts. Might the future for PB be bleak, with little money for residents to be able to influence, and departments looking for cuts, not investments?

On the other hand quite senior figures from all political parties have expressed support for PB in some way. Only recently I was at a conference in London, and two opposition speakers (Tory and Lib-dem) with an interest in community engagement both mentioned PB in a positive light. We have counted as many PB pilots in Conservative councils as in Labour ones doing PB, with the Lib dems also getting the PB story. We still see a healthy number of new experiences coming on stream.

PB is certainly somewhere on political radar. Politicians are aware that public spending cuts ahead mean some unpopular decisions, so may hope PB will help take the nasty taste away. A more cynical view would be that they are wanting to pass responsibility on to electors for those tough decisions. Or as a way to flatter the population at a time when civil servants and politicians are particularly disrespected after lots of bad news stories, such as the MP’s expenses scandals, bankers’ bail-outs and bonuses, the farce of the Copenhagen summit, the housing market bumping along the bottom, and pensions shortfalls. All of this is against the background of a recession where the rich seem to have survived best of all.

On a more positive note the organisers of the conference mentioned above, report growing interest in PB and that it’s a frequently suggested topic for future conferences. We at the PB Unit have seen interest from departments other than Communities and Local Government, and from statutory or public bodies like health authorities, police forces and housing bodies. There are signs of it expanding outside the narrow confines of England too. The Welsh Assembly has recently decided on using PB in schools as part of their review of children’s rights, and have committed £240,000 to produce new resources to make that happen. The Unit is working in Scotland too now. I could go on.

The challenge for the PB Unit is to continue focussing on trying to deepen PB experiences, with added attention on service design, commissioning, and larger mainstream budgets that are open to influence. Nor to forget benefits from improving community understanding and better deliberation.

PB’s still pretty new in the UK and there are lots of ways it could go. Painting a clear vision of where we might be next year, let alone who will be in the parliament after the election is difficult, but I don’t yet perceive our work is done. There is no turning back now, as PB is here to stay.