£1million of community ideas spent on neighbourhood improvements - your vote counts

Published 6 October 2023

Hundreds of local people and community groups in Pollok and Calton have submitted ideas on how to make a £1million pounds worth of improvements in their areas and helping to influence the decisions that will transform their communities.

Residents now can vote for their favourite options as part of a voting process.

The residents in the two city wards have put forward their ideas on how to spend £1million in their community as part of the council's neighbourhood infrastructure improvement fund and a new citizen's engagement process that will help transform the way communities influence local decisions.

The final ideas, based around eight key themes - including improving open spaces, road safety, street lighting, street furniture, pavements, traffic signals, road conditions and drainage systems -and agreed by the area partnerships and costed out by officers in the council's Neighbourhood and Regeneration Services (NRS).

Your Citizen Voice has seen engagement sessions being held online and in venues in Pollok and Calton to enable as many local voices as possible to be heard and to make sure a variety of ideas and opinions - across a range of different generations - were submitted on what changes the money could make in their area and a real difference to their everyday lives.

This next phase, which is live now, is a published list of final options for the local community to vote on and then the improvements conducted to transform the communities.

Councillor Anne McTaggart, City Convener for Communities & Equalities is delighted with the level of engagement and the number of people who wanted to be part of this new way of co-designing services with citizens.

She said: "This has been a brilliant piece of work and brings participatory budgeting into the 21^st century and where our citizens get to influence what needs done in their communities.

"We asked what you wanted, we listened and now we will deliver on our promises for citizens to be at the heart of everything we do.

"We have been working with hundreds of residents, 3^rd sector and community groups across Pollok and Calton - listening to the voices of all ages - to make sure that everyone has had a chance to have their say.

"Our plan is to use this process across the city - working in collaboration with area partnerships - and use the innovative citizen's co-design template to deliver on decision-making so that our people have the perfect platform to help shape policy.

"We want to empower Glaswegians to be key decision makers and for them to be part of the solutions that make a difference to the things they care about most - their families and their local area.

Voting on the final options in the Calton and Pollok ward opened on Saturday 16 September and runs until 13 October.

There is the chance to vote online and in person as community venues in both areas.

To find out more about the voting visit https://cciglasgow.org/Pollok/ and https://cciglasgow.org/Calton/

Centre for Civic Innovation

Find out more about Citizen power, the NIIF process and the award-winning Centre for Civic Innovation here.