Monday, January 16, 2017

Participatory Budgeting comes back to Nairnshire and goes digital!

Building on the success of the Nurturing Nairnshire event held in March 2016, the Nairn Ward Councillors have again agreed to support the participatory budgeting process for Nairnshire. £20,000 will be made available from the Ward Discretionary Budget for groups to apply for grants from £200 to £2000. Participatory budgeting is the process that lets local communities decide for themselves how funding is spent on what they think will make their local area a better place.

How it all happened last year.

Once again local groups are invited to apply for grants for projects that will make a difference to community life in Nairnshire. In the last round funding supported a wide range of initiatives from developing cycling tracks to growing fruit trees for distribution locally.

A new development for this year’s event in Nairnshire will be the addition of digital technology to support the process. It is hoped that this will be used in the voting process by those taking part on the day, and also in making information available on the applications online before the event takes place.

A spokesperson for the organising group said ‘We are really excited about having the chance to run another PB event in Nairn, especially with the success of Nurturing Nairnshire last year. We would like to encourage as many local people as possible to take part to ensure it brings benefits to the communities of Nairnshire’.

The Nurturing Nairnshire event will be held in the Nairn Community Centre on 4th March from 10.00 to 1.00 and all are welcome to attend to take part in this special opportunity to make decisions locally.

Details and application forms are available from the Nairn Community & Arts Centre, Tel: 01667 453476 Email: info@nairncc.co.uk, from Signpost in Nairn 01667 455234 Email: nairn@signpost-inc.org, and also via Highland Council website www.highland.gov.uk

The deadline for applications is 5.00 pm on the 9th of February 2017.

4 comments:

John Urquhart. said...

Is there any changes in the rules and any feedback from last years winners as to how they spent their money?

Anonymous said...

I think I will come up with an idea, bring 30 people I know get them all to vote for me, win and then leave and vote on nothing else.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous @9.36

That should work!

Internet-ready said...

How old fashioned. It's online this time just get 30 people to vote online.