Your Local Budget - borough first as residents asked to vote online for neighbourhood schemes

Parish councils, community groups, charities and individual residents with good ideas for schemes that will help their neighbourhoods can now bid for up to £2,000 of Royal Borough funding - and then local people will be asked to vote online for their favourites.

In a further borough boost for the Big Society, a total of £50,000 of capital funding is being made available from Monday 6 June for local action in streets and communities in the Your Local Budget consultation:
• £40,000 for bids of up to £2,000 with the public voting at www.rbwm.gov.uk/web/consultation_participatory_budgeting.htm for the projects which they think deserve the cash
• £10,000 to provide additional funding to the projects where the organisers can demonstrate that they have worked hard to attract match funding or help.

Cllr David Burbage, Council Leader, said: "Who better to put forward proposals and ideas for their neighbourhoods than local people themselves! This is the Council saying to residents: If you have a suggestion for making your street or community better, for example upgrading a play area or repainting a village hall, here's a way of bidding for the money to make it happen.

"We want to get ideas from across the borough and then it will be over to residents themselves to vote for the winners."

Monthly lists of proposed schemes will be published on the council's website and those attracting the most public support will be awarded funding. Schemes which don't win will be added to the list for the following month with their votes zeroed out so that all schemes start on an equal footing each month.

Cllr Burbage said: "In this way we will have an ongoing budgeting exercise running over a number of months. We hope it will motivate community groups, parish councils and even individual residents to come forward with schemes that will be of benefit at a really local, neighbourhood level."

The neighbourhood online voting scheme is part of this year's participatory budgeting (PB) consultation which sees a total of £300,000 of Council capital funding available for spending on one-off projects that the public vote for as being of benefit to them, their families and their quality of life. Further information is available at www.rbwm.gov.uk/web/consultation_your_local_budget.htm

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