England and Wales

There is no regulation at any level requiring the implementation of Participatory Budgeting.

Most of the current participatory activity is a legacy of a first wave of PB in England and Wales, that took place between 2008 and 2012, which saw a large increase in the use of, in particular, “Participatory Grant Making”. That is, small funds for community projects delivered by civil society organizations, often at the most local level.

Since 2012 the UK National government has not promoted Participatory Budgeting, though a number of local councils and non-governmental actors have continued to use it as an approach to regeneration, consultation and engagement. As such the innovative practice in England and Wales is lagging behind that of Scotland and Northern Ireland, which, being devolved nations, have different governance arrangements and a stronger interest in promoting participatory democracy. Though the context, drivers and barriers are different in each administration. However there has been continued interest in the potential of PB, especially in the fields of community entrepreneurship (as a tool for enabling citizen led action), for stimulating youth engagement, and for climate change related activity.

The Brazilian PB experience of 1985 to 2000 was the initial inspiration for PB in the UK, going back 20 years now. From the first advocacy activities led by civil society organizations between 2000 and 2005 a model relevant to the UK was articulated and the first experiments began. Between 2005 and 2008 there were a small but increasing number of local government processes; small in budget size and focused on grant making.

By 2008 significant policy progress had been made and the national government, under the New Labour Government of Tony Blair and the leadership of Hazel Blears MP at the Department of Communities and Local Government, it was announced here was a national strategy for Participatory Budgeting. Once again primarily using a small grants model, but with increasing interest in local government ‘mainstreaming’ (service commissioning and capital projects).

The promotional and capacity building work for PB was outsourced to the national charity Church Action on Poverty, through the Participatory Budgeting Unit. This included a website, the development of a comprehensive PB toolkit for local government, a self-assessment evaluation toolkit, the development of national values, principles and standards for PB, as well as bespoke consultancy work and the collection and dissemination of case studies. There was also a separately funded independent national evaluation of PB.

However, with first the financial crash of 2009/10, and then a new national government under the Conservative party in 2010 the emphasis at a national level switched towards new policies such as ‘Austerity’, ‘Localism’ and the Big Society, which emphasized volunteering and the shrinking of the public state. This meant the potentially radical edge was taken away from existing PB work, and also that the funding available to local government was increasingly constrained. Nevertheless, some local governments continued to use the methodology (such as in Durham, Luton, in some of the London boroughs and in the South West (Devon and Cornwall)

Following the closure of the PB Unit in 2012 (as its funding ended) the work of promoting PB shifted towards the unfunded UK PB Network (essentially an information sharing portal/website) and also consultancy support led by PB Partners. Both sat under the umbrella of the Shared Future CIC, a not-for-profit community interest company with a strong background in social enterprise, community development and deliberative democracy.

Most of the PB Partners work became focused on supporting the wave of interest in PB in Scotland that emerged around 2014, which has led to some very significant up-scaling and innovation. There was also interest in Northern Ireland in PB from around 2018 and a growing body of PB work is emerging there. To which PB partners contributed with a range of new simplified toolkits and also direct training and engagement with employees and elected politicians of all 32 Local Authorities in Scotland. Though increasingly from 2017 until today the main support structure for PB in Scotland has been led by COSLA (the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities) and SCDC (the Scottish Community Development Centre).

Shared Future/PB Partners continues to promote the PB model itself, with since 2019 an increased focus on youth PB and Climate Change. For example, in 2019 Shared Future produced a new toolkit/briefing on PB and climate change, with a linkage to other forms of deliberative democracy, such as citizens juries and assemblies, and is also a partner on a pan-European Erasmus+ funded project to ‘accelerate youth PB’

PB continues to be on the policy agenda of some of the smaller parties in England and Wales, particularly of the Green Party, and calls have been made within the Labour Party for it to be adopted, with limited success. Not least calls in early 2019 for London to develop a PB initiative inspired by that of the city of Paris. Bristol City Council also agreed in early 2020 that it would use Participatory Budgeting as part of its climate emergency response, though little has yet happened since due to the Covid-19 Pandemic. In Wales there was a significant policy report commissioned in 2017, following ongoing interest from within the Welsh Government, but again no action has yet emerged.

Shared Future supports some grass roots activity in the form of community led PB, and a number of charity foundations and funders have expressed interest in the “Participatory Grant Making Model”, though they wouldn’t necessarily call that PB. And a number of councils do still run projects they self-define as PB, though the quality of these initiatives is variable and the funding generally very small scale.

Overall, there has been no consistent policy framework or funding for PB in England or Wales, despite a range of awareness raising activities within both countries over the last few years. Undoubtedly the political crisis in the UK that emerged during the long Brexit referendum and subsequent negotiations have been a significant factor in this lack of policy agenda. The COVID Pandemic, though another opportunity to ‘build back better’ through PB has not yet seen much new activity.

Nevertheless, other agencies, including Mutual Gain Ltd, who have been closely connected to the UK PB Network, have also continued to promote PB as a tool for co-production, especially with Health Agencies, and Police forces, with a number of successful projects in both England and Wales over the last 2-3 years. One of the highlights of their work being the large scale grant making based on the Grenfell Tower fire, with PB grant making being used to distribute significant funds to community-based organizations working to restore the affected communities. NESTA is another agency that also continues to reference PB, and Shared Future continues to play an active role in international PB networks, such as the newly created ‘people powered’ PB Global Hub project.

As indicated in the previous section the development of PB in England and Wales (under the Department of Communities and Local Government) has been an encouragement and enabler of the development of PB in Scotland and Northern Ireland. However, the close association with POB prior to 2010 as either a ‘community grant pot’, or a policy of New Labour has meant, at least in England and Wales it has been hard to build the same momentum. Also, much of the policy discourse on citizen engagement has focused instead on deliberative democracy innovations, especially Citizens’ Assemblies and Jurys’. The challenge for practitioners and policymakers in the UK is to find ways to connect and amplify those different democratic approaches in a way that can be accepted by cash poor and risk adverse government.

1. PB have been suspended: 90%
2. PB continued to function normally: 0%
3. PB have undergone changes/adaptations: 10%  

As indicated PB is not a common, coherent or strongly promoted model of citizen engagement at the moment. Due to the lack of a coherent national strategy or funding for civil society activity to measure and report on PB activity it is not possible to assess if any PB’s have continued during the pandemic. However, it is likely most, if not all, activity has been suspended, not least as the use of online PB portals has lagged behind other European countries.

Though not regularly updated at the moment the UK PB Network website is still live and contains a number of useful free resources and toolkits: www.pbnetwork.org.uk

To find out more about the growth of PB in Scotland: www.pbscotland.scot

The newly emerging Northern Ireland PB work is described at: www.participatorybudgetingworks.org

The PB youth accelerator project mentioned in the text has its website at: https://youthpb.eu/

The Welsh report from 2017 mentioned in the text is available at: http://ppiw.org.uk/ppiw-rebyt-publication-participatory budgeting/

The new PB Global Hub (run by People Powered) can be found at: https://www.peoplepoweredhub.org/global-pb-hub