Myself and Gez attended the National Participatory Budgeting Conference yesterday, at the Midland Hotel in Manchester. Despite the early start and threatened train delays (no 6 am journey is complete without that announcement, is it?) we got there in time to hear the keynote address by Hazel Blears.

The resounding message I got from the Secretary of State’s speech and the conference overall was enthusiasm for the PB process, but a recognition of a long way still to go.  This was the difficulty for me, in finding our place in this process. No doubt PB will benefit from online solutions later down the line with city-wide projects, but those initial small pilots which will create a PB culture base need to happen first. There seem to be a lot of barriers to these at the moment, people are worried about where the money will come from, the power balance between ensuring a grassroots process but with enough technical top down support, and of course the central government support falling by the wayside if we change administrations. I think the key here is commitment on a local level, with groups taking ownership of a burgeoning method and making it work for them. With every successful example, no matter how small, the definition and case for PB gets that bit stronger.

Despite these worries there have been some fantastic examples already (for me Newcastle in particular), and as PB (hopefully) grows into disseminating mainstream budgets online support is vital. In recognition of this me and Gez are writing a short discussion paper to talk through the possibilities. (If you are interested in a copy send us an email.) We will make sure the PB Unit get a copy to add to their PB canon.

Oh and lunch wasn’t bad either…