Your Stirling: You Decide, will give the people of Stirling a direct say over how and where part of Stirling Council’s budget is spent, heralding a new age of community level democracy.
Already successfully launched in major cities such as New York and Madrid, as well as other local authorities in Scotland, Participatory Budgeting has increased community engagement and brought real change to communities across the world.
Your Stirling: You Decide is Stirling’s version of the initiative and is backed by an injection of £700,000 from the Council in its first year.
Stirling Council Leader, Cllr Scott Farmer, said: “We have always engaged with our communities when setting our budgets but this takes things to the next level.
“Residents will now have the chance to dictate spending - from the idea stage straight to the delivery of services – changing the way we conduct local democracy.
“So, if you want additions made to your local play park, or believe that your village could do with new fences or an upgrade to the local footpath, this is the chance to make that happen.”
Stirling Council has allocated £700,000 to Your Stirling: You Decide, which will be split evenly between the area’s seven electoral wards.
In the first year, the focus will be on infrastructure and environment projects and there are three simple steps to the process:
- The public generate ideas
- People vote for their preferences
- The projects with the most votes are funded.
Engagement with the community has already begun to help explain the process, and full details are available online at the Stirling Council website via my.stirling.gov.uk/youdecide
Deputy leader of Stirling Council, Cllr Danny Gibson, said: “Budget decisions are normally taken by the 23 elected members of the Council but with this, we’ve devolved that power to the people.
“We’ve approved the finances, now it’s up to the people of Stirling to come up with the ideas for how it should be spent.
“We hope that this helps to build more active and stronger communities that are better able to make decisions about public finances.
“By making people better informed about budgets, they will then become even more engaged and take the chance to make decisions that will have a direct benefit to their community.”
- Background: Participatory Budgeting is increasingly viewed as an important resource to build on the wider development of participatory democracy in Scotland and is seen an example of international best practice in empowering local people to have a direct say in how, and where, public funds can be used to address local needs.
- The Scottish Government has committed to supporting the mainstreaming of Participatory Budgeting by all 32 Local Authorities and has recommended that Local Authorities should allocate at least 1% of all budgets via Participatory Budgeting by the financial year 2020/21.