Participatory Budgeting in the Upper Rhymney Valley

On Saturday 2nd of August 2025 around three hundred residents of the Upper Rhymney Valley cast three votes for their favourite wellbeing projects in the second round of Participatory Budgeting. Those projects having the highest number of votes will receive funding to deliver a project to meet the wellbeing priorities identified by local people.

The Upper Rhymney Valley communities of Rhymney, Abertysswg, Pontlotyn and Fochriw is the first community area in the Caerphilly County Borough to be involved in Participatory Budgeting (PB). This area of the Caerphilly has a track record of poverty and social deprivation, with associated health inequalities such high incidence of heart and lung disease, type 2 diabetes, poor mental health and shorter life expectancy. As such, Welsh Government made monies available through Public Health Wales and the Local Health Boards for PB programmes aimed at engaging communities with poor health outcomes to improve their own health and wellbeing. 

PB had already been delivered in other areas of Gwent, and there was some learning required from this initial experience, as well as from other international research. For those not familiar with the concept, participatory budgeting is a form of citizen participation in which citizens are involved in the process of deciding how public money is spent. For PB in Gwent, the money was specifically provided to improve community health and wellbeing and focussed on the Integrated Wellbeing Network (IWN) areas with the poorest health outcomes. 

Participatory budgeting began in Porto Alegre in Brazil in 1989 and was credited with shifting priorities to better support the poorest parts of the city, improving services, improving infrastructure, strengthening governance, and increasing citizen participation. It was a real success in terms of involving people typically left outside of the political process. However, as PB disseminated beyond Brazil, the concept became diluted and in many instances significantly less effective in achieving meaningful community engagement, involvement and tangible outcomes. 

When GAVO was asked by the Public Health Wales to design and deliver a PB programme for the IWN areas of the Caerphilly County Borough, we decided to go back to source and design our PB programme to be as close to the original Porto Alegre model as possible, albeit reduced in scale. This resulted in a four stage process:

1. Initial engagement, publicity and community wellbeing consultation

2. Open public meeting, wellbeing priority setting based on the results of the consultation (people vote on which 3 community wellbeing priorities to focus on for projects), elections for residents panel representatives.

3. Setting regular residents panel meetings, learning and capacity building, setting wellbeing project criteria and application process and application shortlisting for the public vote.

4. Public voting event - publicity and promotion, venue hire for market place for pitching projects, inviting successful applicants. Public get 3 votes but must cast their votes for 3 different projects (to reduce vote loading). 

The key to our approach was the formation of an area residents panel made up of local people who are elected at an open public meeting. The role of the residents panel is to serve as the democratic representatives of the community, to set the criteria for project applications and drive the PB process forward. This proved to be very successful in Rhymney with residents panel meetings seeing around 15 community representatives attending on a regular basis. GAVO's role beyond designing the programme was to facilitate the delivery process and support the residents panel. 

The Upper Rhymney Valley communities have now experienced two round of PB and we will have to wait and see what the final outcomes will be in terms of the efficacy of the wellbeing projects that were delivered by the successful third sector organisations that participated in the public voting event. However, what seems to have worked particularly well is the re-engagement of residents in community life. The Rhymney residents panel chose to become a fully constituted community regeneration partnership - Upper Rhymney Valley Communities Together, with the aim of continuing the legacy from the PB programme. They have a vision to improve the quality of life for all people living in the area.

PB seems to have increased social capital in the area, particularly bonding and bridging social capital, where PB has served to bring people together from different backgrounds and re-affirm old community ties. For example, the PB programme in the Upper Rhymney Valley has lead to a number of collaborations between community groups in the area where no networks previously existed, and more than 20 individuals have come forward to volunteer for various community groups. It will be interesting to see how the various wellbeing projects being delivered in the Upper Rhymney Valley will impact on community health and wellbeing in the medium term. 

There are currently four areas of the Caerphilly County Borough where Participatory Budgeting is being delivered - Upper Rhymney Valley, Risca, Greater Bargoed and Van. These are all areas identified by the local health board as having significant health inequalities and are part of the Caerphilly Integrated Wellbeing Network (IWN) initiative. GAVO's Community Development team will continue to provide support going forward to enable these communities to build cohesion and resilience. Hopefully, Welsh Government will see the benefit of PB and fund future rounds to maintain momentum and build sustainability within the IWN communities so that they can continue to improve their own health and wellbeing and be les reliant on the NHS and local authority social services.