You Decide!
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You Decide! is the Tower Hamlets Partnership's
innovative project designed to give local residents a say over how
part of the local budget is spent.
What is it?
Participatory Budgeting is, at its most
simple, involving local people in making decisions on the spending
priorities of a defined budget.
The Tower Hamlets model
The Tower Hamlets model has grown out of the
participation work already begun through the Local Area
Partnerships (LAPs) and their Steering Groups. It has four
stages:
1) We develop menus of
services that meet the priorities produced by the LAP for their
local area. The wider menu of services is later approved by the
cabinet ensuring that there is both local and council wide
representative input throughout the process.
2) We hold eight public You
Decide! events. Each one is heavily advertised and hopefully
attended by at least 100 local residents. Each event contains 3
elements:
Service information: The
residents sit at tables and are given a brochure detailing all the
services on offer and how much they cost along with a brief
presentation outlining what is on offer. They then have the
opportunity to further discuss the items on offer.
Deliberation: Each table of
residents has a facilitator and is meant to represent a mix of the
community. We give them a chance to discuss the options that have
been presented and how they might benefit the community they live
in. They don’t have to come to a consensus but it is important that
they hear what their fellow residents think and why they think
it.
Voting: We use ‘Who Wants to
be a Millionaire’ style quiz pads and the residents vote for the
services they want. Each round of voting leads to the ‘purchase’ of
one service and we keep going until all the money is spent. The
voting is designed to ensure that at least 50% of the room support
each purchase. In addition, items are voted for in 'Cabinet
Priority Area' to ensure at least one item from each priority is
purchased. The results are displayed live as we go through the
process.
3) The LAP Steering Groups
meet with the services to agree the details of the items they have
purchased (such as where shrub beds will be located or how often
the services will report to the Steering Group on how they are
spending the local money). This process helps to embed the local
‘ownership’ of the projects.
4) The Services are
delivered. Members of the public and the Steering Group help
monitor and shape the services by using a ‘community contract’.
This contract is built into the process and reviewed at every
stage. It sets out the responsibilities of the Steering Group, the
residents and, importantly, the services.
'You Decide!' is based on the Brazilian
model of Participatory Budgeting which was developed in the 1980s
in city of Porto Alegre. At it's height in Porto Alegre over 15,000
people took part each year.