It's Our City! again needs your help and generosity to support us as we relaunch the Sheffield People's Referendum campaign for the 2021 local elections.
If you haven't heard of us before, please read the summary below for details.
If you are familiar with the campaign you will know that the referendum was due to take place last May but it was postponed due to the Covid outbreak.
Sheffield People's Referendum will now go ahead on the 6th May 2021 May, alongside the local elections. But, the government has said that face-to-face campaigning and leaflet delivery by volunteers is BANNED! The only legal way for us to get our message out to Sheffield's 430,000 voters will be to pay for leaflets to be delivered and to boost our social media posts. This could cost over £13,000!
The Council will be using public money to send out their information about the referendum, but we are an unfunded community group, completely powered by volunteers, so we really need funds to combat these restrictions.
We have no other funding source, so are completely reliant on your donations - please help!
Summary of our campaign so far:
Sheffield communities, led by It's Our City!, are trying to change the way our Council makes decisions, so that it is more democratic.
The problem is that in our Council the power to make decisions is in the hands of just 10 out of 84 councillors from one party. We think this undemocratic system leads to weak decision-making, poor partnership working and a lack of cross-party cooperation. Citizens and communities often feel ignored by our Council.
It's Our City! is a non-party-political community group who discovered that the Localism Act of 2011 gives power to citizens wanting their Council to do better. We organised a legally-binding petition to Sheffield Council, of over 26,000 voter signatures, forcing a referendum.
We want the Council to change to a new Modern Committee system, so that all 84 councillors actually have the power to do the job voters believe they are electing them to do.
A Modern Committee system is: More open, More representative, More Cooperative and More Accountable.
Increasingly, other councils across the country are choosing this new system because it works better for their city. Since we handed in our petition, many similar campaigners across the country have been asking us for advice. Sheffield is leading the way for others to follow!
We now need your help to get the message out that the referendum is happening, so that Sheffielders are well-informed about how the current system is failing and how it can be changed for the better. It's up to us as citizens!
Please donate and share this appeal. Any amount will help us give Sheffield a better future.
Here is a Look North TV report showing that many voters have not heard about the referendum - we need your help to make them well-informed!