Gosport Community Safety Partnership was selected by the Home Office to take part in the Engaged Communities pilot in May 2009 and distributing £20,000 of Home Office funds to the community through a PB process was a compulsory part of the project. Following research and guidance from local PB projects in Southampton and Isle of Wight, the Community Grants model was selected to use in Gosport. An area based approach was also chosen to test out the model, with £10,000 being available for each area. These were based on Police Safer Neighbourhood areas and comprised of approximately 5,000 households.

Community Budgeting is part of a wider set of Scottish Executive initiatives designed to engage local communities directly in decision making processes relating to public funds.The Fife Partnership was granted £424,000 over two years to pilot Community Budgeting within Fife. One strand of this initiative involved undertaking three pilot projects in the West Fife villages, in the East Neuk and in Tanshall. A total of £105,000 was allocated to the three pilot projects (Tanshall £30,000; East Neuk £25,000; West Fife £50,000)

The Department for Communities and Local Government sponsored an Isle of Wight participatory budgeting pilot, UP2U. £20,000 was offered for children and young people in Freshwater and Totland to fund local projects. These projects aimed to improve the health and eating habits of the children and young people in the area.The UP2U Awards Event was digitally interactive, each member of the public was issued a personal voting keypad which they used in order to cast their vote for their favourite local project. UP2U gave young people a chance to make a difference to their own health and lifestyles, and to help others in the future to make the same improvements.

In Cumbria a form of participatory budgeting has been around for a long time through the Neighbourhood Forum Grants mechanism. They are available for any non-profit making organisation that is involved in helping local residents. In 2009 Neighbourhood Forums awarded grants to 965 schemes. Each of the 60+ forums has a grants budget and each area also has its own priorities. Grants are administered on at local level where members of the public attending the forum vote on the allocation.

In 2009 Carlisle City Council secured between £8/9k worth of funding from CIEP for Community Empowerment Pilots as part of a wider Stronger Communities project. The pilots ran in Harraby and Longtown in conjunction with the National Participatory Budgeting unit. The Council wanted to ensure that local people had greater opportunities to have their say in the design and delivery of council services.

In 2010 Bristol City Council aside £15,000 for the wards of Clifton, Clifton East and Cabot to be allocated for spending via an online discussion. While the final decision on spending can’t legally rest with ‘the internet’, the council committed to abide by the decisions made by participants, so long as they are legal. Given that Cabot in particular, being the city centre, is a ward that's used by far more people than live in it, the council did not restrict participation to only those who were the residents of the three wards.

On Saturday 13th March 2010, 150 residents of Blaenau Gwent turned out to have their say in Safer Blaenau Gwent’s ‘Your Voice, Your Choice’ Participatory Budgeting Event. In total £30,000 was available for local people to decide which community safety projects would be funded in their neighbourhoods. The pilot, supported by the Home Office, invited local residents to come up with ‘community safety’ projects, of no more than £3,000 with only two criteria; projects must be delivered in Blaenau Gwent and they must address ‘community safety’ issues.

In 2011 Be Birmingham, a Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) took part in the government’s Small Area Budgets Initiative. The areas of Handsworth and Lozells were designated as the focus of this activity.The Small Area Budgets aimed to explore models of participatory budgeting and to give residents a greater say on how services were delivered locally.

Adur District Council ran their first PB process branded 'Pot of Gold' in 2010. They had £120,000, which included funding from the council's capital fund as well as their reserves, for residents in Adur to decide on how it should be spent. £40,000 of the funds were used in a community grants pot approach and the remainder was for reinvestment into services.

Democs is a deliberation method that takes the form of a card game that enables small groups of citizens to learn about and discuss complex public policy issues.The game usually takes 60 to 90 minutes among small groups of people (between 5-9 players). Democs lowers formal barriers of entry as...