Deliberating on council budget savings with Simulator
The challenge
East Dunbartonshire Council needed to make substantial savings, some £20 million over three years. They wanted to ensure citizens were involved in this decision-making activity and so set out on a comprehensive 'Your Services, Your Choices' budget consultation.
The entire consultation comprised several phases and multiple channels. As well as paper surveys and in-person workshops, the Council wanted to include an element to allow residents to participate online, reach a wide audience, and engage citizens with the difficult decisions facing the Council.
The approach
Budget Simulator lets citizens try their hand at the challenge of balancing a budget, adjusting real data on spending and consequences to reflect their preferences.
To accurately reflect their budgeting situation, East Dunbartonshire used a savings-only model: residents were asked to adjust sliders to reduce spending in different service areas by between 0% and 60%. This draws residents into a deliberative process, carefully evaluating the possible options before submitting their considered preferences.
The results
Initially, the Budget Simulator was going to be live for 4 weeks – but the East Dunbartonshire consultation team soon decided to extend this, running it for 2 months and making it available alongside the Householders Questionnaire.
I'd encourage everyone to visit this online budget setting tool and see where they would find the £20 million we still need to save over the next three years. We really want to hear everyone's views on where they think these savings can be made and whether there might be alternatives to these.
Delib is a govtech leader specialising in consultation and engagement, trusted by over 600 government organisations worldwide, including major planning projects. Since 2004, we've been building secure, accessible digital platforms to make participation simpler, fairer, and more inclusive. Our flagship product, Citizen Space, was built in collaboration with the UK government and has supported more than 11 million responses across over 110,000 democratic activities.