Along with two other tCI associates, David Jones & Susan Ritchie, I attended an inspiring two-day conference in Edinburgh on Participatory Budgeting last week.

The packed first day was an international gathering featuring a Deputy Mayor from Paris, Pauline Veron, and the Scottish Minister for Local Government & Housing, Kevin Stewart. There were also delegations from China, Kenya, Denmark & Portugal and across the UK.

PB is a process to allow citizens, residents or service users to vote directly and decide on how part or all of a budget is spent. In many instances, this may be people voting on which of many possible  local projects should be grant-funded. In others, it might be young people deciding on how to spend a youth budget, carers on how to spend a carers budget, or residents on how to spend the “proceeds of crime” money the Police collect. The key thing is that the community helps draw up proposals and projects and has the final say on how the money is allocated.

The spread of PB is now quite extraordinary. There are more than 4000 cities and towns around the world that have used PB – up from 1500 in 2010, and just 500 in 2008. There are successful examples of PB in every continent.

Pauline Veron reported on their programme using PB across the whole of Paris and in each community – tens of thousands of people have voted on how to allocate more than 20 million Euros across the city. And across the USA, especially in New York and Chicago, PB processes are up and running.

The second day focused more on the UK and in particular the spectacular growth in PB in Scotland since the Scottish Government threw its full weight behind the programme. Two thirds of the 32 Scottish councils are using PB – and in a few cases, Leith & Ayrshire, are into their sixth year or more.

Discussions centred on making PB a “mainstream” process for larger budgets – whole Council department budgets and community planning – with much support for the idea that public bodies should commit to spend at least 1% of their budget using PB.

With more emphasis post-Brexit on people “regaining control over their lives and their communities”, what better way to do that than allowing local people to have a direct say in how their local public services spend their money?