Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what the role of local authorities will be in the establishment of innovation in democracy pilots.

The Innovation in Democracy Programme (IiDP) will involve citizens in decision making at local government level through innovative models of participatory democracy.

Local authorities will be invited to submit an Expression of Interest (EOI) to take part in the programme later in 2018/19. The selected local authorities will be piloting Citizens’ Juries to open up a decision they have to make to citizen deliberation and will be fully supported in this by a Democracy Support Contractor (to be appointed) who will assist them in designing and implementing a process that works for their context, as well as funding to cover costs.

Several local authorities were involved in the scoping for the programme and their feedback informed the design of the Innovation in Democracy Programme.