People’s Assemblies are coming to Salisbury

Citizen involvement idea coming to Salisbury

February 2025

NOTE SMALL CHANGE TO DATES AND TIMES IF YOU HAVE VISITED BEFORE

Does Salisbury need a People’s Assembly? We at Salisbury Democracy Alliance think it does and we have been campaigning for one for many years. Our mission is to improve the quality of decision making in the area and to increase the involvement of citizens in such decision making. Our political system is essentially to hold periodic elections and once elected, we tend to leave them to get on with it. We want to improve on that.

Finally, it seems that we are going to achieve our aim thanks to the support of the national organisation Assemble. They believe our current system is broken with poor decision making at the national level, and capture of government by outside and corporate interests. The first People’s Assembly in Salisbury will be on Saturday 1st March from 2 – 4:15pm at the Quaker Meeting house.

A second one will be held on Sunday 13th April from 2 – 4:15pm at St Gregory’s Hall, Salisbury.

The third one will be held on Sunday 1st June at the Football Club, same times.

At both sessions, participants will discuss what the main issues are facing Salisbury (local or national) and what solutions they propose. These issues and proposals will be fed through to local politicians (The local elections are in May) and after a third Assembly in Salisbury in June, they will be forwarded to the National People’s Assembly being held in July. The National Assembly will have the ear of independent MPs, some of whom are supportive of Assemble.

If you want to participate in the People’s Assemblies please respond to the email below letting us know which ones you would prefer to attend. You may attend as many as you like. Attendees at our assemblies will also have the opportunity to attend the national people’s assembly to discuss issues facing the country. It is, of course, free to attend the assemblies.

We believe that this is a way of giving people the time and space to discuss issues and getting people’s voices heard through a deliberative process.

If you want to participate in one of the People’s Assemblies please respond to this email letting us know which of the two you would prefer to attend. You can respond to this post or send an email to mapotts53@gmail.com. There will be more posts on this topic as time goes on.

Picture shows a Talkshop we held about 2 years ago which has similar features to this project.