Community Kitties

Seeing Hazel Blears on TV Thursday morning announcing this new initiative makes me wonder whether this will ever get off the ground.
The LGA Chairman immediately denounced it, and many Councillors up and down will rightly claim that we already have Community Kitties - they're called Local Councils!
But participatory budgeting - to give it its poroper title has a decent track record and has aroused serious academic and public sector interest for some time. One of its strongest advocates is Davy Jones, until recently the Audit Commission's lead on Area Profiling. Davy used the Consultation Institute's Manchester Implementation Forum ten days ago to focus on this methodology, and secured much interest from those who manage public engagement in several Northern Authorities.
Even without the Ministry sprinkling holy water on the idea last week, I think it is likely that offering local people a direct voice in budget decisions is here to stay anyway; we had all better start learning how it's done.
For my part, we intend to sit down with Davy and with Governance International to plan a full two-day Seminar/Workshop in the New Year; we're open to offers if readers of this blog have some experience they'd like to share.