In the past, decisions were made by politicians and professionals and even today that's how most decisions are made. We know that the people making decisions about our community do so with the best intentions, but they don't always result in the changes people need.

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Communities are experts in the challenges they face and often have a really good idea of how to solve them. Participatory Budgeting respects this by giving local residents more control over how decisions are made and funds are used.

Participatory Budgeting involves the community in decisions about how money is spent to tackle issues and develop solutions. This can be through:

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• Community Voting where the community has an opportunity to decide how pots of money are used. This gives people the opportunity to support ideas and projects that will benefit them, their family and their neighbours and address some of the gaps and challenges people experience.

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• Mainstreaming which gives communities a direct say in how public budgets are used to design and deliver public services e.g. social work, education, parks and roads to make sure the community gets what it needs.

It's really important that the community gets involved because Participatory Budgeting in Scotland is here to stay!

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The Scottish Government has made a commitment to spend 1% of all Public Budgets through Participatory Budgeting by 2021 and that means local people will have much more power over what happens in their area.