The master class was funded as part of the Take Part Pathfinder project.  The aim of the afternoon was to introduce PB to both residents and statutory stakeholders and the attendees were a good mix across these two constituencies and included representatives from a wide range of residents associations as well as officers from housing associations, Salford City Council, Greater Manchester Fire Service and Greater Manchester police.

Jez Hall and I gave an overview of PB and especially how it related to the health and police sectors.  Chris Dabbs, from the organisation Unlimited Potential, also spoke on how PB might help improve health outcomes in Salford.

The master class then broke up into three workshops to consider questions around health and wellbeing, crime and community safety and giving citizens a say.

Salford City Council has a history of using participatory budgeting around its highways budget and a local housing provider, Salix Homes, has also recently undertaken some PB  and therefore residents already had knowledge of some PB and had particular questions about how the process had worked in the past. However, the master class enabled people to think about the different ways that PB can be used particularly around tackling health inequalities and anti social behaviour and how the involvement of local communities in putting together PB initiatives can empower people to make changes in their lives and communities.  Feedback from the afternoon was very positive although there was a feeling that one afternoon was too short a time to fully explore the issues raised in the workshops.

I felt there was a great deal of benefit in residents and officers sitting down together to look at how PB might benefit Salford.  PB is often seen as a “top down” process and of course it does need buy in from those who currently hold the purse strings. But the process should as it develops become something the community owns and indeed demands as they become more involved in the process of budget setting.  Bringing residents and officers together to learn more about PB and to see each other’s perspective, concerns and what potential could be identified  is a good start in embedding PB in the community and the fact that the event was oversubscribed led me to believe this is a good way of people coming together to learn about PB.

Some interesting points came out of those discussions.  The one the stuck most in my head was that when people have specific issues with people in other communities (whether they be geographic, cultural, religious, or anything else) you have to address those issues first before you can successfully bring them together.  Several practitioners cited times when they thought just bringing them together to talk about their problems would be sufficient, only to find that shouting matches ensued and community cohesion given a severe blow, rather than improve it.

At PB Unit we advocate the bringing of people together in one physical space (in the form of an event or meeting) so that they can listen to each other and discuss and deliberate the various merits of different projects asking for funding.  And most of the time this works well.  But when there are significant community cohesion issues arising from particular problems, maybe it wouldn’t work so well.  Whilst we’ve always advocated the need for community development and capacity building to run along side and prior to any PB process, perhaps we need to raise this particular point more. 

This led on to the discussion more specifically about the rise of the British National Party (although that’s up for debate) and other racist organisations such as the English Defence League.  As practitioners said, when the specific issues that people had with their neighbours or other community members were addressed, the issues of racism and prejudice went away.  They found that because an issue had developed which hadn’t been resolved, possibly because of cultural misunderstandings, it grew into an issue of race or religion or some other prejudice.  The issue might be noisy neighbours coming in at all hours of the day because they’re working shifts and living in cramped conditions, but it quickly becomes about ‘the polish people’ in general!  Or the issue might be that someone’s been made redundant and is having difficulty finding a job.  They see migrants getting low paid jobs and feel that they’re missing out because other people are getting the jobs.  And that quickly again becomes about ‘others’ getting jobs.  If social housing address the overcramped conditions and get onto the landlords to improve standards and jobwise or Citizens Advice can help with people getting skills and accessing jobs then the issues are resolved and the problem of racism goes away. 

However, where public sector is ill equipped, under resourced or under skilled to deal with the situation the problems escalate.  And this is where the BNP or other similar groups can come in and say things like ‘British jobs for British people’ that those people, feeling ignored and isolated can latch on to and draw hope from. 

Whilst I thought that Question Time last week was interesting in and of itself, I actually thought the reactions of people and the media afterwards were more revealing.  There were a lot of people saying the program showed Nick Griffin up to be the racist that he is and that he couldn’t hold his ground against more experienced politicians.  But a lot of people were also saying that he was bullied and attacked and they felt sorry for him.  The media seemed to dismiss these people as ‘idiots’ or worse, but I think that labelling and ignoring of people’s views is the issue.  They are the same people who feel ignored by their local public sector because issues they have aren’t being dealt with properly, they feel left behind and betrayed by mainstream political parties and they can relate to the underdog in Nick Griffin.  And Question Time only increased his underdog status. 

These people aren’t stupid or idiots.  They may be a minority, but they are a worrying minority.  Unless their issues are heard and dealt with, and unless the mainstream political parties can come up with clear messages that are different from each others, that make sense and are inclusive of the people who feel left behind; and unless they can find a way to rebuild the trust that was lost in the MPs expenses scandal, they will continue to lose votes to the BNP and other similar parties. 

Community cohesion isn’t a racism issue (sometimes it is, but it isn’t always), it’s a people not getting along well with their neighbours issue.  And that issue is exacerbated as resources become scarcer.  And it’s not just an issue for community development workers to address.  It’s an issue that needs to be addressed by all local public sector agencies, all political parties, and everyone in their communities.  Sending people ‘back to their country’ isn’t the answer – working out how you can live with them, be heard and understood – that is. 

And this is where PB comes in (you knew it had to come in somewhere!).  PB is a way of bringing people together (once you addressed the underlying issues) to build that community cohesion – for people to find out what they have in common, not just what’s different and to realise that they all can live together, get involved in their communities, have a say on how money is spent and share what resources are available. 

The only way to stop the rise of the BNP and other similar organisations is to stop labelling those people that vote for them as ‘other’ and ‘not like us’ and really listen to them and deal with their problems – and then bring them together to discuss issues of salience where they have real power to decide how money is spent (but not in a Barnet way – but that’s a whole other blog!).  There will always be a few hardcore racists that won’t change their mind, but the majority of people just want to get on with their lives in peace – and it’s that they feel is being jeopardised at the moment. 

A journalist friend of mine who group up in inner city Manchester describes waiting at a bus stop when he was in his late teens on a wet cold night.  A flash car drew up and when the window was wound down he saw the driver was someone who he used to go to school with. A conversation ensued the gist of which was “aren’t you a mug, carrying on with your studies? Where is it getting you?”.   Individuals and communities have to see that justice is done and that people do not benefit from ill gotten gains.

Legislation allows for the assets of crime to be seized.  Last year, in an effort to ensure that the public benefited from this money, members of the public were able to suggest suitable projects for funding  to their Local Criminal Justice Board.  These were sifted by the Board and the people could have a say on their preferred project via a website.  Then a panel approved funding of what it judged to be the best projects.

This is laudable but it could now be  taken a step further.  If the money was devolved to areas which people define as their communities, if individuals were able to vote themselves and if what they voted for was where the money went.  If people were able to get together, perhaps on line through a blog or even better had the opportunity to meet face to face to discuss projects and have time to deliberate.  An opportunity for old and young, and people from different backgrounds to come together.  Divided up this way the individual amounts of money might not be large but the benefits in terms of people understanding where the money had come from and seeing the results in their own community would be great. It might be that this money could be added to other pots of money – from the police, the fire service and the local council.  Small amounts added together which can make a real difference to people’s ownership of what is happening in their own community.

But that (the cost) is for another blog, maybe. We decided to do so partly because of the impending general election and the distinct possibility of a change in the complexion of the government, but also because the current political and financial climate presents a real opportunity for the development of PB in the UK. At the meetings we have tried, with the help of guest speakers from various backgrounds, to put PB into the wider context of pressure on public spending and the need to restore confidence in democracy.

Attendances have been mixed, but the delegates have engaged enthusiastically and the mood has been positive. Notwithstanding the fact that all parties will be keeping their powder dry on the detail of their policies, there is now a clear consensus on the importance of involving local people in the decisions that affect them. Obviously the key issue for all the parties is the perceived need to cut public spending. There is a real danger that the election will become a “who is talking the toughest” competition and the real issues will be lost. It is imperative that do all we can to emphasise the potential impact of spending cuts on the most vulnerable communities and the need to involve local people in spending decisions. Scarcity of available resources can put pressure on community cohesion and, again, PB can serve as a tool to mitigate the risk of extremism.

The opportunities for PB to take its place in the mainstream political agenda are there, but we have to be careful that it is not hijacked to deliver outcomes that are not consistent with what we want to see.

I most definitely do not have the answers to that, but I am working on a project with the International Centre for Participation Studies and CFE to try and find some answers.  I must just point out – we’re not doing evaluation ourselves, we’re researching it to find out the most useful ways for projects to evaluate themselves.  We’re not involved (except on the margins) with the SQW/CLG evaluation and this project is different from that. 

We interviewed a number of stakeholders at four different projects over the summer and sent out a questionnaire version of the interview questions to the other projects that we could find contact details for.  We got quite a good response rate to that – 20 out of about 60, which is about a 33% response rate, during the summer when everyone is away.  Which just goes to show the relevance of the subject.  Then we took the information we’d gathered from the interviews and questionnaires to a workshop with some other non-practitioner (with the exception of Bill) interested PB stakeholders.  These included consultants involved in evaluating regeneration activities, academics, third sector people involved in participatory evaluation and think tank people. 

We had a very lively and engaged debate with them around five key questions we had coming out of the interviews and questionnaires. 

From all of that we plan to develop some tools but we realise that one set of tools probably won’t fit all, especially given the level of innovation and diversity currently happening in the UK PB projects.  So we may develop a number of ‘pathways’ to help projects think about their project and what evaluation they want or need and then provide a number of tools to fit different scenarios. 

But this isn’t all altruistic behaviour, at least not on the part of the PB Unit.  We recognise that for our own ongoing reputation and work we need to start to provide a more comprehensive national picture of PB, both in terms of the similarities and differences in PB projects around the three countries that PB is currently happening.  So we need the tools in order that projects can provide us with relatively consistent information that we can compare across projects. 

We’re just at the beginning of this project – having gathered information and views from different stakeholders we’re embarking on a long and interesting journey.  So if you’d like to be involved or be kept informed of our project, please do let us know and we’ll do our best. 

This is a complex issue, and beyond the scope of this particular blog!  There is though an absolute requirement to work through the practicalities of how small grants PB programmes (if maintained over the long term) would function alongside sustainable mainstream initiatives, and what their function might be, above and beyond creating initial interest in PB.

I used to work for Bradford’s Local Strategic Partnership.  We did a lot of useful work but one of the key frustrations many of us shared was the ‘natural wastage’ syndrome, whereby a lot of interest was initially created in a ‘new neighbourhood structure’ resulting in well attended meetings and genuine action, but once the novelty had worn off, and initial pressing issues discussed and addressed (or otherwise, depending on their complexity, available funding etc!) the attendance at meetings inevitably dwindled. It then became increasingly difficult to maintain momentum, without the ‘assistance’ of a major local issue blowing up (proposed school closures, traffic incidents etc). People would complain of the meetings turning into ‘talking shops’, which  also became increasingly dominated by ‘gatekeepers’, community activists who would  provide  lot of energy and input into their neighbourhoods,  but whose own agendas  were not always those of the community as a whole.

Bradford Vision also developed a pilot programme of PB initiatives, and I was able to take the learning from this into my work with the PB Unit.  I’ve since worked closely with several steering groups delivering PB in other areas of the country, and have been struck time and again by how effective this process is in terms of securing and maintaining involvement from  residents, as well as that of elected members and officers

When people grasp the underlying idea behind PB, they tend to understand the point of the process, and therefore have trust in it.  Just as importantly, within a ‘small grants’ programme, where an event is planned, publicised, delivered, and the resulting projects monitored for effectiveness of delivery, there is an extensive range of tasks for people to become involved in.  This cuts through the ‘talking shop’ syndrome at a stroke. There are examples of residents having done everything from catering support to door to door surveys, designing publicity and managing computerised scoring systems.
All this community capacity building can be provided for a relatively small outlay, most of which is in any case returned to the community through projects receiving funding.   When ‘small grants’ programmes become established, the ‘community knowledge’ developed could be made  available to service providers, whilst local people engaged in small scale PB would be very well placed to contribute to mainstream PB processes.

If parallel small grants and mainstream PB processes were developed within given areas, residents would have the opportunity for ongoing engagement at whatever level they felt appropriate, right through from helping make tea to decision making  regarding strategic resource allocation.  And wouldn’t that be interesting?

Chinese PB is often about empowering members of the people’s congresses that are supposed to be a counterbalance to public officials. For many years the various congresses at city, state and national level have simply 'rubber stamped' the party line. Increasingly the congresses are being seen as essential counterbalances to unaccountable local administrative power. So, as the conference explored, another quite universal reason for adopting PB is to try and ensure that local corruption doesn't get out of control and public resources aren't just squandered.

PB might be seen as a sign of a reformist government in China, indicating a willingness to embrace more open politics – a way of demonstrating that the local administration is really willing and able to listen. Of course, just like in our own country, unless backed by real political will to empower citizens, PB can remain tokenistic. Becoming, in the worst cases, an empty brand used to mask poor governance. PB can be done badly, and will likely be done badly if it’s seen just as a 'safer' way of practising democracy. PB should never be a means for bypassing meaningful electoral representation, nor just remain a top down tool of public administration.

Without also having strong underpinning values around equality and empowerment, PB risks being rather a sterile top down initiative. A process for public appeasement that doesn’t lead to meaningful change. But PB can also become the trigger for a wider renewal of democracy. In the impassioned words of a senior delegate to the people’s congress in Shanghai, without real and meaningful information on what the community wanted and about what the administration was doing, and without the budget transparency that went hand in hand with PB, how could congress members effectively represent the people’s interest or protect the rights of the ordinary citizen. When delegates to the people’s congress are calling for PB then maybe some hope remains.

So we see another theme that emerged from the conference. That good governance requires the interaction of three pillars of democracy. These are open and accountable public officials, well informed elected representatives and empowered and active citizens. PB offers something to all these ‘stakeholders’ in local democracy. That’s maybe why PB is so ubiquitous. PB promotes the interests of active citizens, facilitates the work of effective and accountable public officials and strengthens and legitimises representative democracy.

So could it be that PB is a Trojan horse inside the Chinese political process, and perhaps a harbinger of some profound change within our own country too? Hopefully a taste of participatory democracy will lead to calls for further openness and maybe bring real democratic reform to the People’s Republic. With low voter turnouts, growing inequality in society and high levels of cynicism about professional politicians milking the system, the UK could do with some democratic renewal of its own. I believe PB will become an essential ingredient of rejuvenated local democracy inside the UK. The old style party leaders and bureaucrats that still dominate China and the UK probably hope it doesn’t. They (the ubiquitous men in grey) might like PB to just operate as a safety valve, putting off rather than speeding up calls for real political reform. Whether they are correct, and whether once tasted, you can hold back an appetite for democracy, remains to be seen.

In China countless decisions emanate from inside a closed, insensitive and unaccountable political class, with a limited popular mandate dominated by outdated ideology. Yet I learnt from recent involvement in an academic conference in China, PB is very much a topic of interest within the People’s Republic. PB is used in a surprisingly wide range of Chinese cities and many Asian countries. We heard how some Japanese authorities are using PB to build new non-profit organisations that deliver the frontline services that people need and the state can’t provide. Funded by a guaranteed 1% of the local authority budget, with decisions about who gets the money taken by ordinary non elected city taxpayers. Korea is using PB to both bring local economic development to poorer areas, and also address controversial urban planning issues in more affluent cities. Thailand practices a form of rural neighbourhood management. Indonesia is using PB to help recover from the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. India has been experiencing PB in some places for years.

So PB is now embedded in Western Europe, is already quite widespread in Africa, beginning to be considered seriously in North America, and remains common across Latin America. Cities like Christchurch in New Zealand have been recognised as early adopters of PB and even Fiji has used PB as a mechanism for village level community empowerment. PB is most definitely a growing global phenomena.

What the conference that took place in the city of Hangzhou showed is that PB can continually surprise us by it’s adaptability and its universal appeal. Even where an autonomous civil society and the independent third sector remain weak, and even where representative democracy is largely absent, academics, active citizens and more enlightened local administrators agree that PB can be a useful governance tool. The way it is being used maybe be different in China, but the motivations behind adopting PB is often very similar to our own. Some surprising realisations arose from comparing experiences of PB.

The Chinese are first and foremost seeking to modernise the effectiveness their local public administrations, without changing the fundamental political system. PB is offering public sector professionals new insights from accessing local knowledge, helped design specific services like new bus routes, while at the same time improved the accountability of unelected officials by increased budget transparency.

It is increasingly apparent that PB is not only the prerogative of socialist politicians. Left and right wings alike see benefits from supporting PB. As demonstrated by the state of Kerala in India, which for many years has been using a very sophisticated form of PB under alternating communist and right of centre parties. Both sides have continued with a well embedded state-wide process that enjoys lots of popular support. This is a bit like the situation in Porto Alegre, which has seen PB survive the surprise ousting of the left wing Workers Party a few years ago. PB in Porto Alegre is carrying on, with some modifications of course, and not without some complaints -- but the basic process remains.

Once citizens get the PB bug, no politicians can ignore the desire of ordinary people to play their part in decisions that affect their lives.

The Conservatives, who are now the largest party in local government, say they believe strongly in local democracy.  They promise, if elected, to free up local councils and to give them greater control over the monies they receive from Whitehall.

The Liberal Democrats say they will stop central government interfering in local government. They want to scrap council tax.

Labour claim that the best way deliver excellent services is in most cases through decentralisation and devolution.

Behind all these policies, aimed at freeing up local government, is the assumption that local people making choices about how money is spent and which services they want to see delivered in their communities is  a good thing.  The Conservatives say “Our aim is to empower and embolden people to take action themselves”  Labour says “We do this because we trust the people to be the best authors of their destinies, and want to see power spread through our society”. The Liberal Democrats say “It’s time to put communities back together”.

The Liberal Democrats go on to say that the British system of government means that a political party can win an election even if only a quarter of the people vote for them.  And herein lies the problem.  Because if turn out in general elections has gone down, the number of people turning out at local elections is even lower.  Only about a third of voters bother to turn out at local elections unless they happen to fall on the same day as a general election. Some inner city wards have turns outs as low as 19%.  The reasons for low turn outs are varied and complex but there is undeniably a lack of trust in those elected to make decisions on our behalf and a general disinterest about politics in Britain today.

The three major parties seem to agree that more people would vote in local elections if councils had more power and could retain more money locally enabling them to make important local decisions for the communities which they represent.  But to really combat apathy we need to do more than this.   Local councillors rightly complain when they see that over the last 20 years power has been taken away from them. They want to see this restored and this does makes sense.

But why stop there – councils need to roll out decision making to local communities and let local people decide what services they want to receive. Difficult choices sometimes have to be made about public services – that’s going to be true more than ever in the next few years. Give people the facts, the space and the opportunity to decide for themselves.  This is what is so empowering about participatory budgeting.  Through PB, people can see the relevance to their lives of getting involved, of voting, not just for how public money should be spent and what services they want in their areas, but also who should represent them – both locally and nationally. 

Those councillors and MPs actively involved in PB are much more likely to be trusted because people see them, get to know them, and can actively see that politicians trust them to make sensible decisions about budgets.  It makes sense that people would vote for candidates they know and trust over ones they don’t.  The old adage is true – to gain power you must first give it away. 

This is renewing democracy in its truest sense. 

Where has it come from? Government is supporting 13 local pilot areas following a fascinating local attempt to do this in Cumbria, called Counting Cumbria. In particular, in a report accompanying the Budget in April, Sir Michael Bichard sang the praises of such an approach saying it held the key to making the level of service/budget cuts/transformations needed in the recession.

Actually it is not a new idea at all. There have been many previous attempts to do similar projects. Five years go, Blackburn with Darwen council brought in consultants to demonstrate where money was spent locally after false BNP claims of “all the cash going to immigrants”. When I was leading the Area Profiles project at the Audit Commission, we tried a similar financial mapping exercise but retreated in the face of Government/official apathy.

But the Total Place idea remains sound. And it is potentially extremely relevant to PB.

The more that PB heads towards mainstream funding and Local Area Agreements, the more issues will get raised about tracking public money locally across the myriad of local agencies and services. For local people, especially when PB or other budget issues come up, it is quite reasonable to ask how much money local services get from Government and how it is spent on things like community safety or public health. The problem is that up to now local councils and other services working together in LSPs have not been able to give an answer – simply because it is so damn complicated!

The Total Place pilots, and the swathe of other areas now jumping on the bandwagon, may change all this. There seems to be a momentum behind this idea that may prove irresistible.

What should we do? Two obvious things: 

1. try to get the notion of the information being unravelled by the Total Place piloting being packaged in a way to stimulate citizen interest in local services/budgets;
   
2. attempt to get some of the PB pilots to do Total Place and vice versa. If we could link budget mapping to allowing citizens to make difficult choices over priorities, we would really help to embed PB into the mainstream over the coming years.

When we talk about community cohesion the emphasis has often been about challenging stereotypes, helping newer communities be heard and breaking down barriers between people from different backgrounds. Whilst people are wary of people who look different or wear different clothes, the argument goes, people tend not to distrust the person who lives next door to them, who feeds their cat when they are away, whose children go to the same school.  If we all get to know each other better then better community relations will follow.  This is undoubtedly true.  Initiatives like the Big Lunch where people come together in the street where they live to share food and company are a good thing.

But it does only go so far.  We do have members of our community who traditionally might have been called the white working class – although some members of this community have found themselves workless since manufacturing collapsed in the 1980s – who just don’t feel listened to.  However much they learn about other people they feel neglected. They cite as examples of this concerns that their children are not being able to get public housing near to their parents, the perception that some minority groups get more than their fair share of funding and the fact that if they voice their dissatisfactions they are labelled racist.

So enabling people to understand each other, know each other and share each other’s cultures is one side of the community cohesion coin. The other is to stop people feeling that life is something that happens to them over which they have no control.  People need to be empowered.

Participatory budgeting can be an important tool.  In Porto Alegre, where PB began, the Mayor opened up the city’s books so anyone who wanted could see what money was being spent where and how much there was. That would be a good first step in letting people see where the money really goes.   Letting people decide what they want to spend a certain amount of money on, encouraging them to be prioritise what they want to see, and for whole communities to have the opportunity to vote on which project or service they want for their area can counter the charge that minority groups get “all the money”. 

‘Wouldn’t this be dangerous?’ Some people ask.  Would the money not be spent on pet projects rather than where it is needed?  Well be reassured – PB is only ever about a small percentage of the public budget (although that small amount of money can make a huge difference).  In the UK it has often been very small amounts of grant money.  Local people should be involved from the start but there will be criteria set down as to what projects can be voted on.  But it’s also important to question our own motives.  Do we, as elected members, council officers, and chairs of residents groups, think we know best?  Are we afraid of giving up some of our power?

The BNP gained seats because of apathy. Their vote this year actually went down from the last Euro elections but in the middle of the MPs’ expenses row there were plenty of people who opted out of voting all together. This combined with the party list system of voting was all that was necessary to let the far right in.  We have to reinvigorate local democracy. We neglect this at our peril and PB, which helps develop budget literacy, to deliberate, discern and weigh up arguments, can really help.  There are also reports that when people are able to make decisions themselves they do not simply vote for their own narrow self interest but as they listen to presentations, weigh up the options available and deliberate; they support projects which benefit the community as a whole. That’s community cohesion.

If the choice really is between spending money on the National Health Service and education or money put into initiatives like citizens juries and participatory budgeting then surely it’s obvious which choice will be made.  Community empowerment, it would seem, be bound to take a hit.

But we don’t have to look back very far though to see what happens when communities fall apart.  For those of us living in Manchester the evidence is all around us.  The collapse of manufacturing in East Manchester during the 1980s led to social problems which we are still wrestling with today.  As traditional jobs disappeared for the skilled and unskilled men (and it was usually men) and they fell into long term unemployment; their sons did not find work when they left school. Their grandsons, by now the third generation in worklessness, had never lived in families where adults got up and went out to work every day.  The culture of work was lost.

Boys (and again it was often males) absented themselves from full time education and started hanging around street corners.  They fell into a hopelessness which resulted in drug and alcohol abuse, anti social behaviour and crime.

When the government and councils finally cottoned on to the enormity of the problems facing such communities they began to see that the only way forward to resolve such problems was to begin to rebuild the community, to repair what had been fractured and damaged, for people to begin to believe in themselves and the power of working together. Something that would have been obvious to our forebears in this city who had gone to the Methodist church, Workers Education Association and joined trade unions.

Over the last decade places like East Manchester have been transformed.  Substandard properties have been demolished and replaced by gleaming new build. Schools have been rebuilt as state of the art academies. We have new health centres and doctors surgeries.  But changing people’s view of themselves, giving people the power to influence change and the belief that they can do so is much harder.  Much good work has begun to be done around citizens juries, participatory budgeting, planning for real. We are, however, only just beginning to see “green shoots” in this area. There are still too many young people who can’t see a future,  too many people who don’t see the point of getting involved (“it never makes any difference”).  Turn out in elections is depressingly low leading to results such as the BNP getting an European seat even though less people voted BNP this time.  Faith in representative democracy, far from improving over the last 12 months, is probably at an all time low.

If, now, at this juncture we began to retract from the community empowerment agenda, if we simply believe that we can cut public spending and at the same time “tell people what is good for them” we risk reaping a terrible harvest. It is worth remembering that PB began not in a time of plenty but in a time of famine. When democracy was restored to Porto Alegre in Brazil there was no money in the kitty. PB was about hard choices.  And the way to bring about real change in our society, to foster real responsibility  is to trust people to make the right choices for themselves and their families.  To empower people to take control of their own lives and their own communities.  Now is not the time to shrink from community empowerment, now is the time to expand it.  

Voices against such a move might be concerned about a waste of resources, as centralised Local Education Authority services are split up. Or believe that there simply isn’t the skills among school Parent and Teacher Associations and governors to properly control school expenditure. The President of the Association of Directors of Children's Services, in a recent article in Children and Young People Now, also warned that government plans could damage relations between schools and local authorities. Responsibility for any problems would remain with the local authority, but decision-making would be out of their control.

Advocates may point out that devolving improvement budgets fits in with the proven practice in devolving decisions out of Whitehall ministries to the grassroots. Devolved school budgets would make sure expenditure is based on often very local variations in need and would empower head teachers and governors, and, therefore, by implication, parents.

A timely report by the Audit commission on the state of school financial management coincides with the launch of the white paper. The report, Valuable Lessons, shows schools not creating best value on their expenditure, which leads to costs being higher than they might have been if better managed. It has also pointed out that 40% of schools are holding onto reserves of cash above their proper level. Around £500m nationally is thought to be sitting around in these school accounts.

Does this surplus mean a small amount of money can be spent in imaginative ways that develop young people’s ability to weather an uncertain economic future? Such as schools supporting pupil led social enterprises, environmental improvements and community projects. Ideas initiated by young people, controlled by young people and commissioned or delivered by them. Bringing opportunities to build practical skills needed to avoid becoming labelled ‘Not in Education, Employment or Skills’.  Skills like financial literacy, negotiation, team working, decision making and evaluation. Or actions that support the citizenship curriculum by encouraging participatory decision making within the whole school community.

A number of forward thinking schools have begun this process. A primary school in Cumbria is planning from September to hand decision making power over school activities and capital improvements to their pupils. Elsewhere a secondary school is using its enterprise coordinator to bid for outside resources to run an extended schools PB project. They are hoping to lever an additional £20,000 into the school to be spent by their pupils. There are others planning the same move in different parts of the country.

The process can simply begin by sitting down with the school bursar and identifying small pots of money that are available now as discretionary investments. Each school will have some spare resources it can find. Some more than others, as the audit commission has identified.

Wouldn’t it be empowering if just 1% of school budgets were placed in the hands of pupils, just as parents give allowances to their children. By giving around £10 a week pocket money to my two teenage children, so they can learn how to manage money better, I entrust a small percentage of my household budget to my children. Most parents do the same. According to research, the average 15 year old gets around £300 a year in pocket money.

Can schools go some way to match the sort of trust shown by parents? A radical innovation perhaps, but one that our experience of doing PB within schools shows is possible.

And yet there is no real political debate taking place about ideas and what sort of society we want, just the same old regurgitated sound bites and posturing; the left is still in total disarray; students should be out on the streets but most seem more preoccupied with social networking than changing the world.

And then there’s the economic crisis. Whichever forecast of when we will come out of the recession and how quickly we will see a significant recovery in the economy proves to be accurate, the impact of the recent financial meltdown on public spending will be felt for years to come. Government departments, local councils and other public sector organisations will be expected to do more with less. Can there be any good news here? Is there a way of turning all this gloom into an opportunity?

Well, maybe participatory democracy’s and, in particular, participatory budgeting’s- time has come. If these democratic and economic challenges are to be met, then the role of elected politicians has to shift from being primarily decision makers - on the basis of a perceived, but half hearted, electoral mandate - to being facilitators and enablers; from claiming to be the voice of, to giving a voice to, their constituents. If they trust us, maybe we can learn to trust them again. The leading local government academic, Professor Gerry Stoker, said recently “There is now a growing degree of consensus that representative democracy needs engagement with participative democracy and vice versa”.  

PB is one of the most effective ways of empowering communities. It is a means of giving local people a sense of ownership of (and pride in) their neighbourhoods, making decision making transparent, strengthening social cohesion and building community capacity and confidence. It can enable local people to have a direct say in how spending is directed to the services they depend on and is a particularly powerful tool, when difficult choices need to be made about public spending priorities. It can also serve as an effective catalyst for partnership working at either LSP or neighbourhood level particularly relevant in the context of Corporate Area Assessment and the HMT Efficiency Unit’s recent pronouncements about a stronger role for LSPs and the integration of local service provision.

Recently published research into community empowerment by De Montfort and Southampton Universities (Empowering communities to influence local decision making) identified PB - together with citizen governance - as the most effective tool they looked at. The research recognised that, although the set up costs of a PB project can be relatively high, the degree of impact on communities as a whole (i.e. beyond the participants themselves) is often greater than that of other initiatives, especially when part of a wider strategy. And it is at its most powerful when spending is under pressure and difficult choices have to be made about priorities, when trust between politicians and citizens is needed more than ever - such as now. Now it can make a real difference and truly reinvigorate, maybe even save, our democracy.

I was lucky enough to be sent by the PB Unit to the conference on participatory democracy and the internet in France at the end of May.  I found that it was a really good conference which both reassured and comforted me as well as challenged my thoughts in new directions.

I think the comforting came from the fact that it wasn’t a conference full of techy enthusiasts exclaiming the virtues of this software or that and how it can engage with the hard to reach whilst not costing anything which immediately makes me slightly suspicious. 

The conference had a good mix of practitioners in participatory democracy, academics and IT experts.  And by and large people were saying that whether or not e-participation is a good thing really depends on how and where and why it’s used.  I.e. the local context and objectives are important.  A particular software programme is not neutral, democratic or even particularly participatory.  It requires people to articulate their requirements for software and to stick with the process until they get what they need.  Whether or not a programme becomes democratic and participatory is largely down to those designing it and adapting it and using it. 

Something that Manuele Braghero from Tuscany said (he has been involved in piloting e-participation with some new legislation in Tuscany) made a lot of sense to me.  He said “participation is a value, e-participation is a tool.”  I think too often the two can get confused.  A software programme or a website can’t have values (ethics etc).  It is a tool that could work within a set of values or create them but on its own it doesn’t have any.  So really development in this area should be led by the values underpinning it of empowerment, democracy, improved public services and improving the lives of people in poverty.  Rather, than is often the case, being led by the technology and its capabilities.

The challenges came from listening to discussions and presentations about Barack Obama’s election campaign and about what can be achieved by good use of the internet.  Obama led a very successful online campaign.  He achieved this because of a number of reasons.  Firstly, and this links with the previous point, he tied it to his experience and values from community organising.  His campaign was led from the grassroots – anyone could be involved.  Anyone could donate any amount of money online and be involved in giving their views on his campaign and his policies.  This was a significant step away from the more traditional approach of obtaining the financial support and influence of a few elites. 

Secondly, Obama integrated his offline and online campaigns.  He mobilised a huge workforce of volunteers led by relatively few paid staff through his online campaigns.  The volunteers then took his message door to door garnering support offline, reporting back on their progress online.  In the ‘real world’ there isn’t distinction between your life online and offline – it’s all just your life.  So there shouldn’t be this distinction in participation because it’s an artificial distinction that’s created by technology.  By joining the two up it makes it a more coherent whole.  If the offline informs the online and vice versa the participation will be much more cohesive and sophisticated. 

Of course there are key differences between an election campaign with a fixed date and goal, to a participation mechanism which could have a number of different goals with more flexible timescales.  Also, it’s likely that it would be repeated if successful, so it’s not a one off campaign.  However, I think the principles in Obama’s approach are relevant to wider adoption.

I’m not suggesting that everyone should go off tomorrow and develop online and offline PB, that is a local decision that has to be made.  But if you are thinking about e-PB then it may be worth considering how, why, what you are doing online and how it relates to your other offline participation activities. 

The danger of which is that, apart from during the odd scandal or rumpus, more and more people switch off from engaging in democratic activities. Once the habit is lost it becomes harder to re-build from a very low base.

What is even more depressing is how the tide has been flowing the other way for some time and that this will only add to that trend.  Participation of young people has fallen continually over many years, particularly amongst young women, alongside low general awareness of and respect for democratic process.

Following a recent invitation to present on PB from Plan, it was thus heartening to be reminded that not everything about our democracy is broken in the UK. It is still possible for our example to encourage others that democracy is still alive, and supporting young people towards democratic activity is a worthwhile investment.

Plan (a major international aid charity that focuses on improving the lives of young people in the poorest regions of the world) asked the PB Unit to coordinate a set of presentations about how young people have been getting involved in England recently. Plan brought their children’s governance local country representatives to the UK to hear about PB. Experienced campaigners all specialising in children and young people's empowerment. What they clearly wanted to hear during their stay was some of the exciting innovations that have been going on in the UK, to see how they could transfer that learning to their own situation.

Whether its through school based PB projects, or working within a community, young people have positively grasped the opportunity to spend money on making life better. And not in a selfish, ill thought out ways. In a number of different projects we are involved with they have shown themselves capable of reflecting on and balancing competing needs. They have become engaged in listening to others to understand what works. They have agreed without conflict how limited resources can best be used, and celebrated the opportunities given to them. Better democrats and more passionate than most adults manage to be.

Whether it is young advisors working with the police to deliver PB events as in Heywood, Rochdale; primary school councils working together to plan out of school activities as in Walsall, or now becoming involved in the big spending, as in Newcastle's recent U-decide programmes; the pattern is clear. If you want to build young citizens of the future you need to start young and to keep faith with them and in their abilities. Share a bit of power, and explain things in language that is clear and relevant. Most importantly you need to make the first experiences of democracy a meaningful and therefore successful one. They have to see that, as promised ‘we said, and you did’. That their time and their energy can make a difference.

If you pull it off you can capture young people's attention, and hopefully enthuse them into taking part in democratic society for many years to come. In more ways than a vote every 4 years. Potentially building a fresh set of young activists to become the squeaky clean politicians and community leaders of the future.

More wishful thinking? Not if you review some of the international evidence, and also the interest in policy makers across the whole of the UK, not just look at London’s political bubble. Such as the soon to be concluded Welsh Assembly committee inquiry into children's budgets.

As the Welsh children’s commissioners says in their submission to the enquiry “We need to examine how we can establish mechanisms for participation in budget setting and allocation decisions as well as question how we can involve current structures such as school councils, children and young people’s partnerships and youth forums.”  So its not just us then.

More important is the way young people have found a fresh voice for themselves through PB. Enjoyed an authentic experience of direct democracy, begun the habit of participation, and created a positive challenge to adult views of young people as presented in our more lurid media outlets.

One of the problems is there is little qualitative and quantitative information available. We've struggled to find up to date and focussed information in available statistics about young people and participation in voting, or the scale of cross departmental spending on young people, other than some headline figures from a few years ago. Maybe you can help us?

But getting lively and current information on what is actually happening is as important as dry statistics. We suspect more is going on than we know. Which is why we have developed a simple online survey where you share what you are doing in relation to young people, participatory budgeting and participatory democracy. Are young people the hope, or the kiss of death to representative democracy?

Get involved and tell us what you think about young people and PB at:
http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/136443/participatory-budgeting-and-young-people
 
And in true participation style we promise to keep you informed about what comes out of it.