Across the United Kingdom, local authorities are entering a period of increasingly difficult choices. Rising inflation, shrinking budgets, and growing public expectations are converging to create a climate of fiscal uncertainty and social anxiety. With council tax increases now announced across many regions, questions are rightly being asked about how public money is allocated, who gets to decide, and how we ensure the greatest social and environmental return on investment.
This is not simply a budgetary challenge. It is a democratic opportunity.
In my role as a councillor on Shipley Town Council, which serves more than 10,000 residents, I witness first-hand the daily pressures facing local government. Prioritising essential services, whether waste collection, youth programmes, or community climate action, requires difficult trade-offs. But these trade-offs should not be made in isolation from those most affected.
At this critical moment, participatory budgeting offers a vital mechanism for restoring public trust, strengthening local democracy, and addressing sustainability challenges in ways that centre community voice.
Participatory Budgeting: From Consultation to Co-Governance
Participatory budgeting is more than an innovative governance tool; it is a democratic process that enables residents to directly influence how public funds are spent in their communities. It builds transparency, fosters civic engagement, and generates better development outcomes because decisions are grounded in lived experience and local knowledge.
Critically, this approach moves beyond consultation to co-governance, empowering citizens not just to react to decisions, but to shape them. Evidence from around the world demonstrates how participatory budgeting can support a range of public priorities: from recreational services and public health to infrastructure, climate adaptation, and urban resilience. For communities facing the intersecting pressures of austerity and climate disruption, this model ensures that public spending is both strategically targeted and socially accountable.
Case Study of the Shipley Town Council’s Green Grants
In 2023, Shipley Town Council successfully launched the Green Grants scheme – a participatory budgeting initiative designed to support local climate action projects. The scheme invites residents and community groups to propose initiatives that promote sustainability, reduce emissions, or enhance local biodiversity. Funding decisions are then made through a public deliberative process in which residents not only to vote on proposals but engage with one another, learn about local priorities, and co-create responses to climate and environmental challenges. This participatory budgeting for climate action model strongly reflects a belief that local democracy must evolve to meet the complexities of 21st century governance not by centralising power, but by sharing it. Over two funding rounds, the Shipley Green Grants have funded several projects for biodiversity protection, climate education, home retrofitting, safe street play, and community wellbeing.
Restoring Trust Through Accountability
Participatory budgeting does more than allocate funds. It rebuilds the social contract between citizens and their governments. In a time of growing disconnection and disillusionment with democratic institutions, these processes create a sense of agency, ownership, and mutual accountability.
The involvement of the public in the budgeting process also creates new opportunities for demanding more from elected officials. Consequently, transparency is not just a performance, but it becomes embedded in the governance process, where decision-makers are directly answerable to the public in ways that traditional budget processes often obscure.
For those of us working at the intersection of law, governance, and climate justice, the implications are clear: empowering communities to shape climate and sustainability agendas at the local level is not optional; it is essential and impactful.
Moving Forward: Scaling Participation for Systemic Change
If we are to meet the demands of the climate crisis while addressing systemic inequality and democratic decline, then community participation in public finance must become the norm, not the exception.
Local governments across the UK and beyond should consider embedding participatory budgeting as a standing mechanism within their planning and finance processes. In doing so, they can:
- Improve the legitimacy and effectiveness of public spending
- Enable targeted, inclusive climate action
- Foster civic education and political engagement
- Address inequalities in representation and resource access
The task is urgent, but the tools are available. Participatory budgeting offers a scalable, inclusive model for responsive governance and resilient communities.
📌 Originally published in abridged form by the Yorkshire Post
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