As local councils in England continue to feel the sting of over a decade of budget-slashing austerity policies, Brent council has launched an initiative to give residents the power to decide how they spend £2.25m of funding for local projects.
The participatory budgeting process was first pioneered in Porto Alegre in Brazil. It has been trialled in Tower Hamlets, but is a first for Brent council which trialled a much smaller version of the initiative in January, with a funding pot of £500,000.
