Oral Answers to Questions

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

11. What steps he is taking to promote neighbourhood planning.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

16. What steps he is taking to promote neighbourhood planning.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Nick Boles)]

Neighbourhood planning is proving to be one of the Government’s most popular reforms. Nearly 1,000 communities across England are working on neighbourhood plans, and all eight of the plans to go to referendum thus far have commanded popular support.

[Nick Boles]

I greatly enjoyed visiting Coton Park with my hon. Friend and meeting Jill Simpson-Vince. It is a textbook case of how a community can come together to improve their lives through neighbourhood planning.

[Andrea Leadsom]

In 2010, Northamptonshire council leaders rightly decided that the best way to get a local plan in place quickly was to stick with Labour’s west Northamptonshire joint planning unit. Can my hon. Friend confirm that if they should wish to get rid of this undemocratic body once the local plan is completed, I hope in March this year, they need only write to his office requesting that it be disbanded?

[Nick Boles]

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend’s local authorities on making sure that the best is not the enemy of the good. She is absolutely right that the constituent authorities would need only to write to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to ask for the order to be revoked.