Participatory Budgeting Voting

Across Scotland, we support local authorities and community partners to deliver Participatory Budgeting (PB) voting projects. This helps to allocate local resources and ensures that young people can play an active role in local decision-making. It also supports young people to be engaged with their local communities and active citizens.

Young people can vote for local projects using the unique number on their Young Scot National Entitlement Cards (Young Scot NEC) when using our new PB voting website. This process ensures that young people can easily participate whilst protecting the integrity of the vote.

Our PB offer to local communities

  • We support our local authority partners and community organisations in many different ways, including by:

  • Delivering workshops with young people and local staff to co-produce PB votes, set the agenda, and identify correct processes and procedures.

  • Using our young.scot website to showcase the vote and its information.

  • Running targeted information campaigns on social media to encourage local young people to participate.

  • Delivering local votes using our PB online voting website.

  • Showcasing the results of the vote to stakeholders and within the local community.

More than just a vote

The latest version of our PB voting website is easy for young people to use on desktop or mobile using the unique number on their Young Scot NEC. The site also allows flexibility with constituency or whole authority level voting and is not restricted to specific geographic constituencies. It can also run votes based on thematic constituencies, school catchment areas and parliamentary boundaries.

The site can also report the ongoing tally of votes to local staff if required, or can be supplied at the end of a vote during a live event – helping to keep the momentum high!

Each local authority has its own space on our young.scot website. We can further support PB votes by featuring information on these individual pages. which can be customised to include information on lots of topics, including:

  • Upcoming votes

  • Application procedures

  • Information about potential projects

  • How to vote

  • Dates of hustings

  • Results and announcements

The local pages on our young.scot website can also be used when using other voting software or paper ballots.

Young Scot Membership & Rewards

We can incentivise young people to participate using Young Scot Membership & Rewards – our programme that encourages young people to be active citizens by rewarding them for taking part in positive activities.

Once they’re signed up at young.scot, young people can take part in different types of activities to earn points, such as helping to co-produce PB votes, applying to be part of the vote, voting, and other activities.

Once they’ve collected their points, young people can exchange these for exciting rewards. As all young people in Scotland are eligible for a free Young Scot NEC – there are no barriers to taking part, such as not being able to log into systems designed for adults due to identity or data protection requirements.

Your local council or a community group might be running a vote using our Young Scot e-voting website. They might be asking for your opinion about a local project or for your say on how you’d like a budget to be spent.

Here's a quick tutorial on how to use your Young Scot National Entitlement Card to vote at: https://voting.young.scot/

Get in touch

Over 700,000 young people in all communities across Scotland have their free Young Scot NEC and can easily use this to vote on local issues. For over a decade we have been supporting local authorities and community partners to deliver PB votes – and know the best ways to ensure that young people have the best opportunity to have their say in local decisions.

If you would like to have a chat about how we might support young people in your local area, then please do get in touch with Gavin.