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Mike Desborough – Neighbourhood BudgetsDepartment for Communities and Local Government

Larger Councils Conference – 21 March 2013

Neighbourhood Community Budgets versus and participatory budgeting

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Aims

• Inform: public service reform and Localism, focusing on neighbourhood services

• Enthuse: what’s in it for you and your communities

• Support: now you’re interested, what you can do…

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Public service reform at a time of fiscal restraint

• Main focus of Government is on promoting Growth

• But we’re also looking at more effective and efficient ways to commission public services

• And giving communities more control of their neighbourhoods

Inform

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So, what does this mean in practice?

• Getting the economy going again – including through house building

• Reforming public services– Creating more effective and efficient public services, from developing

economies of scale to very local tailoring of services in neighbourhoods

• Pushing power away from Whitehall to the most appropriate level: individuals, communities, local councils, other institutions, professionals

• Promoting activities that build communities

Inform

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Community Rights (plus): Our Offer to Communities

Neighbourhood Planning

Greater influence over planning for neighbourhoods

Community Right to Build

New ways to gain planning permission

Community Right to Bid

Better opportunities to secure community assets

Community Right to Challenge

Community groups able to apply to run local public services

Community SharesRaising local funds for

community projects

Neighbourhood Community

Budgets

Community influence over public service design & spend

Parish CouncilsMaking it easier to set up town

and parish councils

Progress: 510 Neighbourhood Plans +230 Assets listed +14 Challenge front runners +12 NCB pilots + 100 Community Shares registrations per year

£64m package of expert support and grants

Inform

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Better tailoring of neighbourhood services

Neighbourhood Community

Budgets

Exploring ways to achieve better, more efficient local public

services through greater community control and

co-design

• Neighbourhood Community Budgets are part of the second phase of the Local Government Resource Review

• The concept is simple:

Local public services can be more effective and efficient where they are co-designed and joined up by residents, public service agencies and others (e.g. VCS, local business, etc)

• No blueprint…

Inform

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Neighbourhood Community Budgets – supporting areas to redesign services

Town Councils

IlfracombeHaverhill

VCS

Queens ParkLittle Horton (Bradford)

Poplar (Tower Hamlets)

Castle Vale (Birmingham)

Balsall Heath (Birmingham)

Local Authorities

Cowgate, Kenton Bar & Montague (Newcastle)

White CityNorbitonSherwood (Tunbridge Wells)

Shard End (Birmingham)

Type Neighbourhood Themes

Family services Health & well beingCommunity assets

HousingWorklessness

Skills and trainingLocal economic growthAnti social behaviour

Youth servicesPublic realm

Inform

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Neighbourhood Community Budgets:example Inform

• £3.8m spent on public realm and youth services p.a.

• Community events to identify top 10 priorities for each.

• Residents and service providers designing new approaches.

• ONE Haverhill board brings together three tiers of local government, others services, business, VCS, faith …

• Budget alignment, not pooling.

• Everyone bringing something to the table.

HAVERHILL, Suffolk

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Participatory Budgeting

• A way of involving people in deciding how part of a public budget is spent – often selecting from a range of project options.

• Enables local tailoring of services.• Promotes greater transparency on what money is being spent on. • Helps to bring people together, and connect them into local democratic

decision-making, promote social action, and develop community skills and confidence.

• Around 150 schemes undertaken in England in half of the top level of local authority areas.

• Often work at neighbourhood level, sometimes across a local authority.• Has included local authority, health, police and housing budgets.• Usually small-scale ‘discretionary’ / ‘top up’ budgets under £100k in total.

Inform

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Participatory Budgeting: examples

From the Participatory Budgeting Unit’s website…

• “UDecide” Newcastle – people making decisions on £2.25 million of projects including cleaner, safer, greener and youth services.

• Tower Hamlets – in 2009 and 2010 over £2.4 million pounds a year were spent on local public services, including £150,000 decided by young people through their school councils.

• “Voice Your Choice” in Eastfield, Scarborough – residents voted on how £32,000 should be spent on projects addressing crime and community safety issues.

Inform

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Participatory Budgeting and Neighbourhood Community Budgets

SOME

• budget / other public consultations

• public meetings – ‘you said, we did’

• ward budgets for Councillors

• transparency – budget / spend data

Inform

MORE

• community voting on projects / priorities

• community based activity

• non-statutory / non – core services

MOST

• service re-design / co-design

• pooling & aligning of core budgets

• better use of community assets

• neighbourhood governance

PB NCB

More power devolved…and more energy, skills, time needed

More power devolved…and more energy, skills, time needed

So, bearing in mind the different levels of commitment and the nature of your neighbourhood, think about what the right starting point is for you.

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What’s in it for me?

Participatory Budgeting can …

• improve the transparency of public administration and expenditure

• encourage people to get involved in the allocation and oversight of public funds

• build trust between the government and the population

• strengthen democratic culture social fabric in communities

Enthuse

Neighbourhood Community Budgets can do all this plus

…• better public services for less?• re-balance the relationship

between people and public services

• enable integrated approaches to complex local problems

• harness community resources and assets

• strengthen, or create new forms of, neighbourhood governance

But it’s not a competition: both are good, both offer communities more control to a greater or lesser extent. It depends on what local people want. PB can be a useful stepping stone to Neighbourhood Community Budgets.

Local Councillors have a key role to play in helping their communities think through what role they want to play…

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What’s in it for communities? Enthuse

“there’s loads of young families in Haverhill, and loads of them would be

willing to give a couple of hours of their free time if it meant the place was going

to be better for their kids”

“I don’t think they think about it collectively do they. I mean

they turn the lights off and that saves the Council money but it actually costs the Police more money. … I think if they were to get married and join hands,

and all work together they might all save money.”

• 9 out of 10 people surveyed in Poplar, agreed that they should ‘do their bit’ and over half wanted to get involved in turning their neighbourhood around (1,200 sample)

• Two-thirds of people surveyed In White City said they would get involved in their community to a great or to some extent (500 sample)

• Over half of people surveyed in Haverhill said they would get involved in local services if they felt they could help to improve them.

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So are you interested?If so…

For Participatory Budgeting:• There are tools, guidance, case studies and other resources on the

Participatory Budgeting Unit’s website:

http://www.participatorybudgeting.org.uk/

For Neighbourhood Community Budgets:• Watch this space!

And for Community Rights, including Neighbourhood Planning:• DCLG is funding expert support organisations to work with community

groups, parish councils and local authorities. An enquiry service, advice, case studies (and more) can be found at http://mycommunityrights.org.uk

Support