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Your Norfolk Your Decision
Communities are benefiting from a new and exciting way for local people to decide how £200,000 of second-homes money should be spent in Norfolk. Nationally, there have been projects to get more people involved in spending decisions and this has been called ‘participatory budgeting'. Mostly this is has only been for small amounts of grant and for a small local area. But in Norfolk local partners have tried decision making out across the whole county and for large sums of money. This was a challenging thing to do as it meant all eight local councils agreeing to put money in to run the scheme.
Local partners agreed to focus on the areas that most needed support – these were the important issues that were proving difficult to tackle, such as providing mental health support or special advice services into a rural or isolated community. A group was brought together with representatives from the Norfolk citizen's panel, people who were representing a wide range of different communities and interest groups and young people. They also tried to make sure that this group of people came from a mixture of ages, gender, geographical area and background. With some support, this group steered the decision making process and the giving out of grants.
Local groups and organisations were invited to bid for some of the money. Applications were sorted to see which ones were going to make a real difference, were innovative, good value for money, and were likely to keep going in the future.
Sixteen groups made presentations on the decision day and 100 local residents voted on each one. At the end of the day eight projects were fully funded and one was partly funded. An example is Grow Norfolk which was awarded £60,000. This brings together three social firms: Learn & Grow, Catering for Life and Mow & Grow. Together they provide free gardening services to vulnerable people in the community whilst providing work experience, life skills, qualifications, mentoring and support to people who find it difficult to get a job. It encourages healthier eating and general well being such as through helping those involved to ‘feed your family for a fiver' and to better understand basic food safety and hygiene.
The whole project and the decision day went really went. Those taking part were very positive. Organisations learned a lot from one another and about local partnerships; residents appreciated having the power to make the decisions; and it promoted better understanding between older and younger people and between people from different cultures.
Because it was so successful the local partners have decided to do it again next year. Those involved have learned from what they did and have made up a ‘tool kit' to help others run similar projects in their own local communities under the ‘Your Norfolk, Your Decision' brand. As a result of the project some of those involved have been encouraged to take on other local responsibilities such as becoming a school governor and a parish councillor.
But what difference have these project made? Over the past six months around 4000 people have benefited. The projects mainly focused on young people, disadvantaged people, and on older people. Grow Norfolk report that they have brought in 25 new jobs and £3 million in additional funding in the first six months, with a further 130 jobs planned for October 2009. Age Concern has been able to give better support to people who have lost loved ones. Young people have been helped to get a job through projects such as GOALZ and the Work Academy.
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