Your Citizen Voice
Greater Pollok

A model for participation in local neighbourhoods in Glasgow

Illustration of polaroids on a washing line. 24 citizen ideas funded! An illustration of a family and Pollok

24 ideas funded in Greater Pollok with Your Citizen Voice!

We're making decisions on how the Neighbourhood Infrastructure Improvement Fund is spent based on the opinions of as many local people as possible.

We asked you...

How should we spend £1 million in Greater Pollok?

600 new ideas were submitted and 3 of the most common ideas were...

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Improving or creating community facilities, centres, sports and leisure facilities

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Improving the crossings and pavements safer and accessible for all

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Improving or creating community gardens, green spaces and maintenance

We asked you...

What are your priorities?

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61% said...
Improve open spaces

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56% said...
Improve condition of roads

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45% said...
Improve pavements

After six stages, the Greater Pollok Area Partnership has made a final decision on the ideas which will be funded...

24 ideas have been funded in Greater Pollok with Your Citizen Voice!

Let's break it down...

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Improving Open Spaces
6 ideas funded
£485,000

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Improving Open Spaces
6 ideas funded
£3,000

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Improving Road Safety
5 ideas funded
£8,000

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Improving Street Furniture
1 idea funded
£500

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Improving Street Lighting
1 idea funded
£500

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Improving Condition of Roads
2 ideas funded
£1000

What about the rest of the money?

After discussion, Greater Pollok's Area Partnership have set aside £100,000 to account for inflation, any excess left will be set aside for community funding.

14 ideas still to be fully costed, £251,000 has been allocated for this.

How was the spending of the fund agreed?

We looked at the ideas that received the most votes per 'neighbourhood' and allocated the funding to the top ideas in each neighbourhood.

We portioned the number of ideas as equally as possible between areas. We did this because shortlisting the most voted ideas regardless of their locations would have left areas with no ideas being funded. This wouldn't benefit all neighbourhoods across the ward equitably and didn't account for disparities in participation.

What about the ideas that are not funded?

Below are the ideas that were not funded as a part of the Neighbourhood Infrastructure Improvement Fund. Either they didn't fit the criteria for the fund, or they were not selected to take to the next stage by relevant council services.

You can read about the ideas that didn't make it here.

What's good about this?

This ensures all areas benefit from the fund and represent citizens' votes as the most popular ideas per area will go through.

With this method, the number of ideas have increased in Nitshill and Darnley. The proportion of ideas between each area is as equal as possible.

Initial priorities are also reflected whether it is with the number of ideas per themes or the portion of the fund spent on each theme.

Finally, with this idea only 14 ideas will need to be costed and funded with the remaining fund.

What could be better?

The ideas are not portioned evenly between the 7 neighbourhoods as Darnley and Southpark Village received less ideas in the first phase of voting.

To mitigate this, we selected 3 ideas that cover Greater Pollok as a whole, to ensure that all areas received some benefit from the fund.

The funding is not divided evenly between neighbourhoods due to three things: the nature of the idea dictates the cost; 14 ideas remain uncosted; & we do not have access to data regarding population sizes of the Pollok neighbourhoods to match funding to.

Lastly, 24 ideas are represented with this method - the least of the three options. Although we could have picked more ideas.

A map of where funded ideas are located in Pollok. It shows that there are ideas in Crookston, Pollok, Househillhead, Priesthill, Darnley and Nitshill

Citizen power in Glasgow

The Centre for Civic Innovation are building a network of designers and solvers across the city to enthuse and empower citizens. Combining creative and inclusive approaches, place-making principles, design thinking, research, storytelling and data science to understand and help solve complex problems - difficult to articulate, challenging to solve and have no single solution.

Your Citizen Voice has been integral to discovering the ways that citizens want to be involved in local decision-making and to what extent, we'll continue to build on what we've learned throughout this process, incorporate it into our work, in order to create the city, we all want to live in, we need to enable and trust communities to imagine the future they want to see.

A graphic showing we're in the final stage of the process with a label saying 'Area Partnership make a decision based on your citizen voice

This is local democracy in action and putting people at the heart of the city government’s decision-making in our communities.

Hundreds of ideas on local improvements were submitted and I am delighted that we will be taking forward several of them which will see significant upgrades to infrastructure including roads, pavements, street furniture, and open spaces.

Councillor Ruairi Kelly

City Convener for Neighbourhoods, Assets and Services