In June 2022, Næstved City Council decided to establish a citizens’ assembly to give citizens more influence on the development and future of the municipality.
The members of the Citizens’ Assembly have gathered for a series of meetings where they have brainstormed, listened to experts, been creative, developed ideas and ended up making concrete recommendations and initiatives. Citizens have collectively put in a minimum of 776 hours of work in the citizen collection, which is over 26 days of work in total.
The many initiatives that citizens have developed are divided into six overarching themes that the members of the citizens’ assembly have found most important to work with. The themes are: “Harbor, canal and city”, “Business”, “City center”, “Young people”, “Housing” and “Cohesion between city and country”. In addition, citizens have developed a text about their dreams for the future and made a call to politicians to dare to make bold decisions. All this can be read in the recommendation report:
Recommendations from the Næstved Citizens’ Assembly
The great work of the citizens has just been presented to the politicians from Næstved City Council. A number of city council members were in attendance and were all enthusiastic about the work of the citizens.
The city council in Næstved and the officials in the municipality will now consider the recommendations. They have committed to provide feedback and status on the implementation work immediately after the summer and in two years.
One of the citizen assembly members, Anne, describes the process as follows:
“It has been educational and rewarding to be involved in the citizen assembly, not least because people have brought something to the table – there has been room for all opinions, and we’ve been good at talking about things, listening and expand our horizons. In addition, I have met great people, I would never have met otherwise. I had a really nice time with them”