Participatory Budgeting

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a process of involving citizens in deciding how to spend public money. PB is about community members shaping local services to meet local priorities more effectively and helps allow public money to be democratically reallocated at a community level to ‘priority services’ and initiatives identified by residents. PB started in Brazil in 1989 and has now spread to over 1,500 localities across the globe with around 2,700 processes taking place.

In this section of the website community councils can view short films explaining what PB is as well as examples of the impact PB is having in communities across Scotland.