PB success in North Wales

 Out of four completed projects (two are still ongoing), over 1560 people and 180 organisations got involved, with 63 projects put forward for funding and 26 projects successfully funded with £20,230 being allocated by PB.

Over 90% of participants in the four areas want to be involved with PB again.

Although these figures may seem small, when you consider that these are very small rural communities with a few hundred to a few thousand people maximum.  Each meeting (including all awareness raising and engagement meetings, not just voting events) had at least 50 people at it and in Rhyl they had a total 135 participants, 40 of which were young people.  The projects were funded through a mixture of community councils (similar to town and parish councils) and Local Strategic Boards.  Given the size of the budgets that these organisations hold the amount of money given over to PB is a sizeable amount.  

The four completed projects are Rhyl, Corwen, Tremeirchion and Pengwern (an estate in Llangollen).  The two projects that are still ongoing are Whitegate and Queensway.

In Together Creating Communities first year report, Bill Ellis-Jones the project co-ordinator writes:

"The pattern of scores in every case...demonstrated...that all voters did allocate scores in such a manner as they believed would be of general community benefit, and the results were accepted by everyone, including those unsuccessful, as a fully democratic and true representation of the views and wishes of the community as a whole."

After only one year, the projects have been hugely successful in engaging people across their communities and involving both young and older people.  As the project continues grow we expect to see many more exciting developments in PB emerge from Wales.