Community Budgets

Rural communities are good at local budget management. We have been up to it for years through Parish and smaller Town Councils. This article talks about community budgets at a bigger level of management but I believe community budgets are particularly potent in a rural context. They also have a key role in sustaining local growth as these two expert testimonies from the article suggest:

Laurence Ainsworth is the programme manager for the West Cheshire whole place community budget

We need credible proposals: There is a window of opportunity to embrace the goodwill in Whitehall for this agenda. It’s no good just articulating the problem of fragmented public services, you need a clear solution.

Make links with other ventures: As well as ensuring whole place and neighbourhood budgets are linked, it is important that this agenda is linked with economic growth and developments in relation to Lord Heseltine’s proposals.

Alex Thomson is chief executive of the localism thinktank Localis

Growth must be considered: Local areas need the flexibility to develop their own solutions to issues like skills and employment, ensuring that support for individuals is there. While several of the pilots have developed strong proposals around skills, there are big question marks around whether they will be able to move forward.

Quality of local leadership: Unless leaders work together with other public sector partners to encourage local innovation and co-design, not before long things may be very dire indeed.