English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendment 310 under the welcome leadership of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. I declare an interest as a retired participant in a mixed family farming business in Somerset.

In Committee I spoke at length on the very real need for some form of rural-proofing or rural duty, preferably even a rural commissioner, where a strategic or combined authority had any rural communities within its boundaries. I will not repeat what I said then or speak at such length, noble Lords will be glad to hear, but things are very different in rural England compared with urban England. The needs are different and the solutions to those needs are different. Without some form of rural thinking at the seat of power, rural communities will inevitably lose out if they are poor and need special attention or, at the other end of the scale, if they are enterprising and need help to fulfil their potential.

Rural communities have lost out for decades from not having any clout, rural-proofing or consideration at the various seats of power. We touched on these issues in Committee; some have been raised already in this debate. First, houses are more expensive and wages are lower. In many rural communities there are no houses to rent or buy unless you are very rich. It is a serious rural problem.

Secondly, on transport, how do you get your children to the doctor, to local football training or to the local HE college without an extra car in your family? The answer is that you cannot. Local political administrative thinking needs to take this into account.

Thirdly, on energy, most rural houses have poor insulation and very rarely is mains gas available, so you have to have more costly forms of heating—oil, electricity or bottled gas. The Government have recognised this in recent days, and we are very grateful for that.

Fourthly—this is the most convincing one—there is higher council tax. Central government support for rural local authorities, despite delivery of services being more expensive in rural areas—is 40% less per head compared with the towns, which is why rural council tax is on average 20% higher per head than in urban areas and is about to get worse. This is caused by the fact that there has never been a proper rural voice in central government, which supports the point we are making.

These are some of the shortcomings that rural dwellers have to suffer, but there are also missed opportunities. For instance, in delivering training for entrepreneurs, how do you reach out to the various different businesses that exist many miles distant from each other? How do you set about pumping new life into the various market towns in your area? It is amazing what can be done in this respect by, for example, finding a business theme that can inspire visitors and customers. For instance, there are food festivals at Padstow, which is near me in Cornwall, and at Bridport in Dorset; there are culture festivals, such as those at Hay-on-Wye, Broad Chalke or Cheltenham; or those on art, as at St Ives, again in Cornwall. But there could be garden attractions, nature tours, beer festivals or a major town attraction to attract footfall in its various forms.

I remember visiting, a few years ago now, a small town in central France that had a massive sports centre with a swimming pool, ice rink, gymnasium and climbing walls—note the plural. As a result, every day the town and shops were humming with families who had come from far and wide. The possibilities are endless, but you need a rural focus to help kick-start them and provide some pump-priming funding. In essence, this issue has at its heart both deprivation and need, as well as opportunity and possibilities. It should not be ignored.

Finally, I remind noble Lords that the Bill is called the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. What we are trying to do here is to empower rural communities. I would be appalled if we missed this opportunity to empower our rural communities, when it is such an easy change to make.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendment 310 from the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, while also supporting all the other amendments in this group. I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and of the Town and Country Planning Association, and as an honorary member of the Royal Town Planning Institute.

Amendment 310 would create a duty for strategic authorities to consider the needs of rural communities. It specifically covers land use, development of land and regeneration, housing, employment, health and well-being. Several noble Lords have made the point that there are quite different considerations for these functions when addressing rural needs as opposed to those of urban communities. For example, on housing, many rural areas will see competition for available accommodation from those commuting from elsewhere, from rightsizing retirees and, in many places, from second-home buyers and those letting on a short-term basis of the Airbnb variety. Yet, on average, social housing accounts for just 11% of homes in rural locations, compared with 17% in the country as a whole. Younger people brought up in the locality, including those badly needed for public and private sector jobs, are forced to move away to find somewhere affordable.

On land use, there will be severe constraints on rural areas including green belts, areas of outstanding natural beauty—now known as national landscapes—and local constraints. But urban-rural differences apply to opportunities as well, as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said. For example, rural exception sites allow development that would not be permitted elsewhere, and there are opportunities to work with major landowners.

In many respects, there are substantial differences that require different policies and actions for rural communities, yet these communities are likely to comprise only a small fraction of the total population of a mayoralty or combined authority, and pressing priorities from the majority urban areas may drown out the rural voice. A duty to take on board the needs of rural communities would counter this imbalance.

Of course, the mayor or the combined authority could take a far-sighted approach to embracing the rural agenda for their area without any legislative prompting, but this is by no means guaranteed. The amendment provides the safety net that would make sure that rural issues are not neglected in places where towns and cities dominate. I strongly support the amendment.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I support all these amendments, and in particular the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Best. The tiny village where I have a house, 10 miles from Exeter, is not just a rural community but a farming community. For years, Exeter City Council has wanted to take over the area; those of us living in this tiny village and the other villages round about it know perfectly well that there is not a single person in the city council who has the slightest knowledge of anything to do with rural affairs. It is very important that the Government pick up and take on the fact that rural affairs need to be separately considered.

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Finally, I believe that Amendment 306 in my name is extremely important. If the Government are persisting with these clean energy projects and insisting on removing the power of local residents to object to them, common sense would dictate that fire and rescue services should have the right to be statutory consultees, particularly where these clean energy projects are highly flammable and at risk of thermal runaway and could spread very quickly. These projects are often very close to schools, nurseries, housing and other existing developments, so I frankly find it weird and very alarming that these potentially highly flammable planning projects are not benefiting from advice from fire and rescue services. If they were statutory consultees, it would make the potential sites safer. I end on that note and ask the Minister in her heart to explain to the House this evening for what possible reason of safety and good practice fire and rescue services are not statutory consultees to these potentially very dangerous sites.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 307 would require every local planning authority and every strategic authority, separately or jointly, to appoint a qualified and experienced person to act as chief planner, as a number have done already. This amendment has been championed by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, who has been steadfast in his commitment to this reform, which he has maintained would accelerate housing delivery and growth. I am also grateful for the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, who in Committee stressed the value of a high level of professional planning input for mayors and strategic authorities.

The proposal for a chief planner has been gathering momentum from the time of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025. It has been promoted by the Royal Town Planning Institute with support from the Better Planning Coalition, which represents some 40 organisations in this sector. Just last week, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Excellence in the Built Environment recommended this approach to drive the professionalism and responsibility in decision-making that is required to unlock planning delays and command the level of respect needed when negotiating and liaising with senior local authority members.

The relationship between council members and their officers is changing. The Government’s policy for deregulation of planning decision-making means that decisions on whether a planning application should be taken to the planning committee or dealt with by planning officers alone will be determined by the elected member who chairs the planning committee and the chief planning officer. This procedure underlines the need for a senior figure to be identified with the status to assume this responsibility. It has also been suggested that the chief planner might have a formal role in ongoing training for council members with planning duties, a role that requires a person of seniority who commands respect.

Having a named chief planner who is fully qualified and experienced with the corresponding status attaching to the role provides, in the words of the chief planner for Newcastle City Council and the North East Combined Authority, the strategic direction and strong professional leadership that a planning authority needs. It creates a clear and trusted voice for our communities, our elected members and our developers. She concluded:

“Making this role statutory would strengthen our profession and inspire the next generation to aspire to be chief planners themselves”.


Meanwhile, the experience of taking this approach in Scotland has demonstrated its value there, not least in enabling everyone to identify the key person responsible for planning matters. It is worth noting that the amendment would enable authorities to choose to share a chief planner with one or more other authorities, if they so wish.

Here is a chance to help reverse the decline in the position of planning, raise morale and support the profession without costs to the Government. Planning departments have been starved of resources over recent decades, yet planning is set to be hugely important in the work of new mayoral and other strategic authorities. The RTPI’s latest survey of the state of the profession lists the recruitment and retention challenges. Local planning departments are short of up to a third of their staff. Two-thirds of them are using agency staff to fill gaps. Shortages of suitably qualified people mean delays that undermine new development and less proactive engagement before and during a planning application, leading to worse outcomes. The profession needs boosting, bolstering, encouraging and promoting, as well as very welcome additional government funding. This means changing perceptions and enhancing the status of a vital profession. Appointment of the key officer as chief planner would do much to achieve this.

In Committee the Minister said she would continue to keep this matter under review but would want

“to do a bit more work on this before we take any decisions on it”.—[Official Report, 4/2/26; col. GC 593.]

I hope that she has now been able to satisfy herself that this is a worthwhile initiative and that she is able to accept the amendment.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, in this group I have Amendment 186, which would allow a separate cultural ecosystem plan to be put in place to sit beside the local growth plan. I was very heartened by the support for this amendment in Committee from the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. He said this amendment

“really matters … because it is the means whereby clarity will be produced about who in the mayoral and local authorities is responsible for what”.

Furthermore, he drew attention to

“the need to ensure that local government maintains the key responsibility that it has always had for the development of cultural assets in its area”.—[Official Report, 4/2/26; col. GC 619.]

I could not have put it better myself.

Our cultural assets are an ecosystem that crosses boundaries as well as being hugely important at the local level, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, emphasises. We talked at some length about culture on the first group today, but I ask the Minister once again whether cultural ecosystem plans might be considered for the guidelines at the very least.

I have also put my name to Amendments 124, 127 and 246 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, which she fully explained. Her agent of change amendment is hugely important. I will not repeat the arguments I gave in Committee except to say that the Music Venue Trust points out the significant difference between how the system works in England, where it is non-statutory and unsatisfactory, and in Scotland, where there is a statutory requirement and it works well. If the noble Baroness wishes to take this to a vote when the time comes, I will certainly support her in the Lobby.