Issue - meetings

By Councillor Caldwell - The Importance of Participatory Budgeting

“Housing, Homelessness and Fair Work Committee notes;

1)    The Scottish Government target for local authorities to spend 1% of their annual budget through Participatory Budgeting (PB) frameworks.

2)    The benefits to resident engagement of project funding that PB provides through direct democracy.

3)    The success of ‘Leith Chooses’ in Leith Walk and Leith wards and previous PB programmes such as ‘You Decide’ in Portobello/Craigmillar and ‘South Central Decides’ in Southside/Newington & Morningside wards.

4)    The October 2021 PB update to Finance and Resources committee that anticipated PB accounted for 0.32% of the Council’s budget.

5)    The recommendations in the Homelessness, Housing and Fair Work committee’s ‘UK Shared Prosperity Fund’ August 2022 report to not submit a funding request for Leith Chooses, the last active PB programme co-run by the City of Edinburgh Council.

The Housing, Homelessness and Fair Work Committee requests;

1)    The Convenor of Housing, Homelessness and Fair Work to meet with the Convenor of Finance and Resources to explore how we can support Council-led PB alongside local residents and volunteers.

2)    That Council reaffirm the importance of meeting the 1% of Council Budget on Participatory Budgeting target.

3)    That Council submit a plan within two cycles to the Finance and Resource Committee on;

a)    How it plans to support on a realistic and sustainable basis the existing PB scheme Leith Chooses (and others like it, if developed) for community grants.

b)    How it plans to develop new model(s) of PB for more communities and appropriate for new areas of direct democratic involvement, such as green / environmentalschemes, health care priorities, and improvement of public spaces.”