Creeting St Peter, the Luxembourg of Mid Suffolk...

I have noted the comparative size of my small, but perfectly formed, village in the past and even done so in the context of the Wider Stowmarket Community Board, one of Suffolk's pilot projects to bring government closer to the people. There are twenty representatives on the board, and I am Creeting St Peter's sole member. Alright, it sounds like a lonely existence, but in terms of relative populations, for every representative of Creeting St Peter, there should be seven from Stowupland, and sixty-one from Stowmarket. So, in the same way that Luxembourg is massively over-represented in the European Parliament, Creeting St Peter is on the Wider Stowmarket Community Board.

This probably wouldn't matter if the body was simply a talking shop. However, there is money involved, £60,000 of it, and as the project is a pilot for the introduction of participatory budgeting, it is important that all three communities feel that they benefit, if only, in Creeting St Peter's case, at the periphery. After all, if we have 1% of the population, we're not likely to get a sizeable share of the catch, so my aim is to encourage projects that Creeting St Peter residents might be able to benefit from, even if they are based in Stowmarket or Stowupland.

However, all of this is irrelevant if the decision making is dominated by small, narrowly based interest groups. And so, Sara, our support officer from Suffolk County Council, has come up with the notion of asking each of the Board members to allocate five tickets each for the hundred strong 'citizen jury' tasked with selecting the projects to be funded. That means another Luxembourg-style over-representation for Creeting St Peter. Now all I have to do is work out how to allocate my five tickets...