How feasible is it to use PB for mainstream budgets?
That depends on the budget. PB is not about using 100% of a budget. It’s only ever been a small percentage of an investment budget, so it’s not affecting core service provision. The maximum percentage allocated by PB in Brazil was 18% of the investment budget. We would never suggest you ask the community if they’d rather fund schools or bin collection, for example! There are certain statutory duties public agencies need to perform and these budgets can’t be open for discussion. However, other budgets have more flexibility. For example, in Salford they devolve a proportion of the highways budget. So local people can decide which highways schemes they want in their area based on the issues. They can decide whether to have traffic calming or pedestrian crossings, whether to remove a tree out of the pavement or have more lollipop people. That doesn’t affect core business – highways are still maintained – and the money is still spent on highways – the difference is, instead of being annoyed
