Presentation to São Paulo city public servants (January 2019). Covers (1) levels of government, from EU to Scottish community councils; (2) the presenters' involvement in participatory budgeting and related research; (3) participatory budgeting in Edinburgh; (4) LeithChooses as an example of participatory budgeting in Scotland; (5) the history and future of participatory budgeting in Scotland; (6) references and sources

1. 1. Levels of government
2. Sidebar: Bruce’s involvement
3. Participatory budgeting in Leith & Edinburgh
4. Leith Chooses 2018-19
5. Participatory budgeting in Scotland
6. References and sources
Participatory Budgeting in Scotland

2. Levels of government (1)
picture source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_state_of_the_European_Union
28 countries in EU
Austria
Belgium
Bulgaria
Croatia
Cyprus
Czechia
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Latvia
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Malta
Netherlands
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
United Kingdom

3. Levels of government (2)
picture source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coun
tries_of_the_United_Kingdom
4 nations in the United Kingdom
Parliament in London is parliament of all UK, but there
is devolution to:
• Scottish Parliament
• National Assembly for Wales
• Northern Ireland Assembly (inoperative since 2017)
Only UK parliament can make laws on reserved
matters. All other matters are devolved to Scotland.
• Scotland Act 1998:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/46
• Scotland Act 2012:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/11/content
s/enacted
• Scotland Act 2016:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2016/11/content
s/enacted
• Social Security (Scotland) Bill
2018:http://www.parliament.scot/S5_Bills/Social%20
Security%20(Scotland)%20Bill/SPBill18BS052018.p
df

4. Levels of government (3)
picture source:
https://www2.gov.scot/Resource/Doc/933/0041318.
pdf
1 Aberdeen City 2 Aberdeenshire
3 Angus 4 Argyll & Bute
5 Clackmannanshire 6 Dumfries & Galloway
7 Dundee City 8 East Ayrshire
9 East Dunbartonshire 10 East Lothian
11 East Renfrewshire 12 Edinburgh, City of
13 Eilean Siar 14 Falkirk
15 Fife 16 Glasgow City
17 Highland 18 Inverclyde
19 Midlothian 20 Moray
21 North Ayrshire 22 North Lanarkshire
23 Orkney Islands 24 Perth & Kinross
25 Renfrewshire 26 Scottish Borders
27 Shetland Isles 28 South Ayrshire
29 South Lanarkshire 30 Stirling
31 West Dunbartonshire 32 West Lothian
32 Local Authorities in Scotland

5. Levels of government (4a)
Within Edinburgh Council area: 4 localities
Source: https://edinburghcouncil.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=9dfa229ba4004f7ca642ed3bd9702094

6. Levels of government (4b)
Within Edinburgh Council area: 12 Neighbourhood Partnerships
picture source: https://edinburghcouncil.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=9dfa229ba4004f7ca642ed3bd9702094

7. Levels of government (4c)
Within Edinburgh Council area: 17 council wards
picture source: https://edinburghcouncil.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=9dfa229ba4004f7ca642ed3bd9702094

8. Levels of government (4d)
picture source: http://socprojects.napier.ac.uk/is/Edinburgh/
46 community
councils in
Edinburgh
(2012)
But 4 were inactive
Data at
• 2012:https://communitykn
ectdotnet.files.wordpress.
com/2018/09/2012-v3-7-
add-doi.pdf
• 2014:
https://www.napier.ac.uk/~
/media/worktribe/output-
180234/cruickshank2pdf.p
df
1369 community councils in Scotland, but 213 were inactive (2012)

9. Sidebar: Bruce’s involvement
Research into social aspects of IT use by community councils
• Summer 2012: ‘community councils online’
• Autumn 2012: MSc project – what are the promoters and barriers to CCs
using the internet?
• Spring 2013: community councils locator web-map
• Summer 2014: ‘community councils online’
• 2015-2016: digiCC workshops
• Late 2016 to 2017: ‘information literacy for democratic engagement’ projects
Activism
• Taking minutes and running websites for
• Leith Central CC since 2012
• Leith Harbour & Newhaven CC since 2014
• New Town & Broughton CC since 2014
• Also Community Councils Together on Trams (2018)
• Scottish approach to mainstreaming PB and draft PB charter
• Scottish Government Open Government Action Plan
• Online Identity Assurance and e-voting
• Wanted to be involved in IT around PB

10. Participatory budgeting in Leith
and Edinburgh
Leith Chooses/Leith Decides is a long-standing example of how PB works in
Scotland
2010 to 2017
• Leith Decides (Leith Neighbourhood partnership area)
• £44,000 in 2016, only from Leith NP
2018: Leith Chooses
• £118,000 from Leith NP and Scottish Government
• Community choices money obtained by Leith Links community council
• (part of £1·5 million Scottish Government ‘Community Choices’ fund
2019: Leith Chooses
• £44,000, only from Leith NP
Edinburgh – other examples
• Voice your choice (employability projects)
• The big vote part (services)
• A city free from Islamophobia (£40,000, run by Police Scotland)

11. Leith Chooses 2018-19 (1)
• Run by small steering committee
• Chair: green councillor for Leith Walk ward
• 2 council staff
• 6 community volunteers (all but one live in Leith) from Leith Community
councils
• £44,000 total
• Grants up to £5000
• Small projects designed to address inequalities, under two themes:
• Food:
preventing and/or mitigating hunger; growing, cooking, educating about
food; providing or distributing food to people suffering from food
inequality; education and/or support of people affected by alcohol issues
• Supporting vulnerable people:
children, older people, disabled people, homeless people, vulnerable
families/single parents, refugees, domestic abuse victims, isolated
minorities etc.
• Voting by anyone aged 8 or older who lives, works, studies or volunteers in
Leith

12. Leith Chooses 2018-19 (2)
Rules
• Only one application per
group
• One-day mass community
voting event
• Applications are only open to
constituted groups
• No online or postal voting, but
information about the projects
will be available online in
advance of voting day.
• Special arrangements offered
to help people attend and
vote, in case of disability or
other barriers.
• Extra ‘boost’ vote available for
projects that strongly engage
with or support minority ethnic
communities
Illustration by Ash Pryce, based on an original idea by Craig Froehle;
hat-tip to IISC and Angus Maguire)

13. Leith Chooses 2018-19 (3)
Issues (as I see it)
• Run by volunteers
• 25,000 people live in Leith but only 1000 voted last year
• Can’t tell who voted online only, in-person only, both online and in
person
• Trusted that online voters lived in Leith (postcode ‘test’)
• 4 votes per person per room – but hard to verify
• No need for proof of age
• Concern that big (= well-funded) organisations monopolised votes
• Elephant in room: Edinburgh council budget is £950 million
• £249 million from council tax
• £346 million from grants (Scottish Government)
• £355 million from non-domestic rates
• Leith Chooses allocates less than 0·005% of Edinburgh Council’s
budget!
Source: http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/file/11418/audited_annual_accounts_2017-2018

14. Participatory budgeting in
Scotland (1)
• First generation (up to 2016)
picture source: http://whatworksscotland.ac.uk/publications/review-of-first-generation-participatory-budgeting-in-scotland/

15. • Second generation based on Scottish Government’s community choices
fund
• 2016-17: £2 million
• £300k on national programme
• £200k 'Impact Accelerator’
• £750k: public authority PB processes
• £750k: community organisations’ PB processes
Detail available at
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/558172f0e4b077ee5306aa83/t/59df
4df7197aeac813c1ffb1/1507806721119/Community+Choices+2016-
17+Report.pdf
Participatory budgeting in
Scotland (2)

16. Participatory budgeting in
Scotland (3)
• Second generation based on Scottish Government’s community choices
fund
• 2017-18: £1.5 million
• £750,000 for Public Authorities (Local Authorities and other Public
Bodies
• £750,000 for community organisations and community councils.
• Detail available at https://www.scdc.org.uk/news/article/community-
choices-fund-201718-announced
• 2018-19
• £750,000
• particularly for deprived areas
• Detail available at
https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/
form/2018/06/community-choices-fund-guidance-and-application-
forms/documents/e4ebb234-5042-4404-b175-
e206a19c50ce/e4ebb234-5042-4404-b175-
e206a19c50ce/govscot%3Adocument

17. Participatory budgeting in
Scotland (4)
The current Scottish model of PB (in my experience)
1. Scottish Government allocates some money
2. Local authorities and community organisations bid for money to distribute
via their PB processes
3. Successful bidders invite other organisations to submit projects to the
bidders’ PB processes
4. Information about the projects may be published online.
5. Citizens vote, mostly in person, at voting events.
6. Results are published, and projects take place
7. At the end of the year, some follow-up or due diligence is done.
Questions
1. Where is the deliberation?
2. Who participates?
3. What happens to the follow-up/due diligence data?

18. Participatory budgeting in
Scotland (5)
Third generation/making it mainstream!
• At least 1% of local authority budgets* will be decided through PB by the
end of 2021.
• https://pbscotland.scot/blog/2017/10/30/1-local-government-goal-
sees-100-million-for-pb-in-communities
* That is 1% of the grants from Scottish Government, not 1% of each
LA’s total budget
• That is around £100 million = £400 million Reals
• Question: how is it to be done?
• So far, ~18 of local authorities have done PB processes
• What about the other 14?
• Other PB processes run by community groups: amateurs/volunteers
• How can this knowledge and experience be exploited?
• Ideas gathered at a conference in December 2018
• My report: https://bruceryan.info/resources/mainstreaming-
participatory-budgeting-event/

19. Participatory budgeting in
Scotland (6)
The Scottish Government’s key messages
• The Scottish Government supports participatory budgeting as a tool for
community engagement and as a resource to build on the wider
development of participatory democracy in Scotland and has invested
£6.5 million over the past four years to support and promote PB.
• In Scotland, PB is better known as Community Choices because the
Scottish Government’s (SG) Community Choices programme supports and
promotes PB nationally.
• This programme is delivered in partnership with local authorities,
communities and third sector organisations, and implemented across
policy areas from policing to health and social care, transport and
education.
• The Scottish Government will continue to work with COSLA to help local
authorities reach the target of having at least 1% of their budget subject to
PB giving tens of thousands of people a say in how almost £100 million
will be spent.

20. Muito obrigado!

21. References and sources (1)
• graphics
– European Union: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_state_of_the_European_Union
– United Kingdom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_of_the_United_Kingdom
– Scottish local authorities: https://www2.gov.scot/Resource/Doc/933/0041318.pdf
– Edinburgh’s divisions: https://bit.ly/2ErrvfQ
– Edinburgh’s community councils: http://socprojects.napier.ac.uk/is/Edinburgh
– Equality v fairness: Ash Price (ashpryce@hotmail.com)
• Bruce’s research: https://community-knect.net/projects-and-publications
– 2012 survey of CCs :https://communityknectdotnet.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/2012-v3-7-add-doi.pdf
– 2014 survey of CCs: https://www.napier.ac.uk/~/media/worktribe/output-180234/cruickshank2pdf.pdf
• Scottish Government etc
– How the Scottish Government is run: https://bit.ly/2AcEHEz
– Scotland’s draft PB charter: https://bit.ly/2GoZb2l
– Scottish Budget: https://bit.ly/2EuvE4q
– Scottish Government Open Government Action Plan: https://bit.ly/2QVrPfx
– Global Challenge Research Fund: https://bit.ly/2S1pFYZ
– Official Development Assistance: https://bit.ly/2EBpOiO
– Scotland Act 1998: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/46
– Scotland Act 2012: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/11/contents/enacted
– Scotland Act 2016: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2016/11/contents/enacted
– Social Security (Scotland) Bill
2018:http://www.parliament.scot/S5_Bills/Social%20Security%20(Scotland)%20Bill/SPBill18BS052018.pdf

22. References and sources (2)
• Brazilian partners
– Professor Renato de Oliveira Moraes: https://bit.ly/2A5P4d3
– Hugo Watanuki: https://bit.ly/2Ern3zu
– Leandro Ramos: https://bit.ly/2Llap6I
– Professor Ursula Dias Peres: https://bit.ly/2EuPRrd
• PB
– First generation of Scottish PB: https://bit.ly/2FbZ1tF
– Second generation of Scottish PB:
• 2016-17: https://bit.ly/2FbSmzK
• 2017-18: https://bit.ly/2sc6OPy
• 2018-19: https://bit.ly/2QtgsqW
– Leith Chooses: http://www.leithchooses.net
– Mainstreaming PB in Scotland (Bruce’s blog): https://bit.ly/2SRe52A
– PB Scotland: https://pbscotland.scot
– Draft Scottish PB Charter: https://bit.ly/2PE8XwR
– 1% target for PB: https://bit.ly/2ydWAns
– Anti-islamophobia PB: https://bit.ly/2gcnmTw
– What is a public body? https://www.gov.scot/publications/public-bodies-in-scotland-guide/
• Community councils etc
– Leith Central CC: https://leithcentralcc.co.uk
– Leith Harbour & Newhaven CC: https://lhncc.org.uk
– New Town & Broughton CC: http://www.ntbcc.org.uk