Participatory Budgeting to be Central to Government’s Big...

Participatory Budgeting to be Central to Government’s Big Society

The Manton Voice Your Choice process was featured in an article on BBC Radio 4 FM at 9.00am on Sunday, 20 June. The programme, ‘Broadcasting House’ is a magazine programme with a fresh approach to the news and discussion about the big stories of the week.

BBC Radio 4 presenter, Paddy O’Connell, visited the Manton Community Alliance on Friday, 18 June, and interviewed neighbourhood manager Richard Edwards, and a number of partners and local people who were involved in the recent Voice Your Choice process. The article looked at participatory budgeting and the importance of local people being given the opportunity to influence how services are provided. ‘Voice Your Choice’ is the name given to participatory budgeting in Manton. Participatory budgeting is to be one of the cornerstones of the government’s ‘Big Society’ and as such, is likely to be a prominent agenda item in the coming weeks and months.

The Manton experience was highlighted in the programme because of the successful development of participatory budgeting in Manton by Bassetlaw’s Pathfinder, Manton Community Alliance.

To listen to a podcast of the programme, please click on this link:

CLICK HERE

or copy and paste this URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/bh into your browser. This will take you through to the BBC site where the podcast can be downloaded and listened to. The article about participatory budgeting lasts about 10 minutes and starts around 6 minutes into the programme.

For more information about this, or our national participatory budgeting process, please contact Richard.Edwards@mantoncommunityalliance.org.uk