Plan for Neighbourhoods

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Tuesday 4th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Alex Norris)]

With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall make a statement about the Government’s plan for neighbourhoods.

The defining mission of this Government is delivering economic growth and driving up living standards. In that pursuit we are determined that nowhere is left behind, because, as every Member of this House will know, when our economy has prospered in the past, not everywhere has benefited. Over the past 14 years, decisions taken by the Conservatives have seen too many neighbourhoods fall into decline, with the most deprived areas suffering more than others.

As we deliver our mandate for change, the £1.5 billion plan for neighbourhoods means that in 75 places across the UK, which for too long have been underestimated and undervalued, this Government will support the delivery of growth and access to opportunity and raise living standards, because when our local neighbourhoods thrive the rest of the country thrives too.

Our new plan for neighbourhoods marks the turning of the page on levelling up. This Government will not repeat the mistakes of the past: no more micromanaged pots of money or pitting communities against one another to bid for them. The truth is, for all the promises about levelling up, the Tories’ instinct was to hoard power and hold our economy back. Some 75 towns were promised funding that did not exist, with inflexible restrictions on how that money could be spent. Our plan for neighbourhoods stands in contrast with the Conservatives’ unfunded and failed approach. Unlike the Tories’ list of restrictive options for how towns could spend funding, we have doubled the policy activity that can be considered by neighbourhood boards and put communities at the heart of making these changes.

The money will be spent on a broadened set of interventions and has completely different objectives, aligned with the missions that the Prime Minister set out in our plan for change. For example, communities can now spend funding on the things that really matter to them, such as the modernisation of social housing, community-led housing, skills support, cohesion, childcare and much more. We are making good on commitments to deprived communities, giving each of the 75 places the certainty that they will receive up to £20 million of funding and support over the next decade.

In many communities, work has already been undertaken, and we want to build on that rather than undo it. That is why in each area, we will support new neighbourhood boards, bringing together residents, local businesses and grassroots campaigners to draw up and implement a new vision for their area. For the first time, that will include representatives from social housing and workplace representatives and, in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the representative in the devolved legislature. In consultation with its community, each board will be given the freedom to decide how to spend the £2 million a year to deliver the priorities of local people, ranging from repairs to pavements and high streets to setting up community grocers, co-operatives or even neighbourhood watches.

These new, broadened objectives will give communities the tools to make informed decisions, with a list of interventions aligned with this Government’s central missions. Those interventions have already been assessed as demonstrating good value for money, so they can be pursued without delay. We have also published a toolkit outlining the wide-ranging powers available to communities and local authorities in England, with similar powers for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to come following consultation with the devolved Governments. This is about giving communities autonomy and about people designing and delivering the change that they want to see.

Our new approach puts communities at the heart of delivery, which is why we have introduced three new objectives to guide the plan. First, there is the importance of building thriving places. People take immense pride in their local area, but too many of our high streets and estates have been neglected and left behind. This funding can be used to ensure that town centres and neighbourhoods better reflect the needs of their community, giving residents a say in how they are designed. It will deliver change that people can see and identify with, so that at the end of this Parliament, people can look out from their doorsteps and see a better neighbourhood. We also want the UK to be a country with world-class public services that work for everyone, which is why this objective will support services that are accessible, responsive and tailored to local need, because investing in young people’s futures and in preventive measures now will ease pressure on services over the long term.

The second aim is to build stronger communities. We want to empower neighbourhood boards to tackle the root causes of disengagement and division and to bring people together so that they can feel proud of their area and safe in their neighbourhood to restore a collective sense of belonging to their community. That is about understanding how division is not only an impediment to growth, but a barrier to driving up living standards.

Our third aim is to empower people to take back control. Everybody should be in the driving seat of their own life and should feel in control of their future, but that can feel like a distant prospect when people are living from payslip to payslip, stuck on a waiting list or just not listened to. It is quite right that people want to have a say over the future of their community, with enough to get by and the opportunity to make the most of their lives. We want to make sure that children have the best start in life and that adults can live the life that they want.

I will finish by talking about the inspiration for this programme, which can be traced back through six decades of community politics. We have drawn enormously from John Prescott and the noble Baroness Armstrong’s new deal for communities, which provided the stability of long-term funding backed by the support of central Government. Like them, our aspiration is to empower local people to drive the renewal of their neighbourhood and to deliver the transformational change that they want to see. This announcement also has its origins in the community development policies of Wilson and Callaghan, who drew the link between social deprivation and social division, and now we are looking to the future.

The Prime Minister has been clear that the task before us requires a decade of national renewal, and our country has all the necessary raw ingredients, untapped talent and potential across every town, city, village and estate, but we also have people without enough to get by and places and public services that have been hollowed out. Addressing that is the central driver of our plan for neighbourhoods, and that is just the start. We have already begun to deliver a real shift of power, aligned with the Deputy Prime Minister’s broader work on devolution, making work pay, fixing the foundations of local government and building decent homes, but this is also a down payment on what we know that communities can achieve. We will give people and places the resources and powers that they need to succeed.

Today’s announcement is a response to anyone in these 75 places who wants to see change. It sends a message that the full force of Government will be there to help them to deliver it, and that is why I commend this statement to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the shadow Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Norris]

I believe that the best value for money is when communities have the tools and resources to shape place themselves, according to their criteria, rather than mine. That is how we drive change.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee.

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Minister for the statement. A number of Members have been on councils, and some of us still serve on them. If we are all honest, the unfortunate reality is that the competitive tendering process did pit some councils against each other, including deprived councils. It is right that we move away from that, and away from the sticking-plaster politics that we have seen over the past few years.

I want to press the Minister to give us a bit more of an understanding of how the neighbourhood boards will be set up and how they will function. Will there be a clear recruitment process to get the local buy-in that is critical? As the Minister said, it is important that we bring communities along with us. If there is conflict between local authorities and the boards—for example, over a regeneration plan—will one have the power to veto the other, and will the Department have oversight, so that it can intervene, should there be serious concerns about interventions and operation?

The Minister said that it was important for communities to have a say in their future, so is the Department looking at the community right to buy? I declare my interest as a Labour and Co-operative MP. Through the community right to buy, we have seen local pubs, libraries, leisure centres and so much more saved. When can we expect to see that new light, and when will that legislation come forward?

[Alex Norris]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Select Committee for those questions. I agree with what she said about competitive tendering; the quid pro quo is that the Government of the day have to be very clear about how allocations are made. My commitment is that we will always be very transparent about how the decisions are made, and I know that the Select Committee will take a strong interest in that.

Turning to the establishment of boards, I suspect that one of the themes of discussion over the next few minutes will be our not wanting to hold back areas that are making great progress. Areas with established boards may take advantage of the opportunity to add more people to those boards, and may move on at pace, while other areas may want to treat this moment as a chance to reboot their board. Either way, the basic principle is that the local authority will be the ring-holder, supported by the local Member of Parliament, but once that board has got going, we expect it to be in leadership. We do not want boards to have significant tensions with their councils, and we would expect any tensions to be resolved in the usual way, but those boards will have the power to get on with the job.

The community right to buy was a component of the White Paper. We are looking forward to delivering the community right to buy, because we know that it would be greatly valued, whether we are talking about buying pubs or other buildings in communities. We are very keen on that, and as a fellow Labour and Co-op MP, I am particularly keen on it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

The Liberal Democrats welcome this plan to work with communities to improve local amenities and engagement in the process. We also welcome the move away from local council areas bidding against each other, and towards a more objective approach, based, for example, on indices of multiple deprivation. In our opinion and my opinion, the previous system divisively pitted one area against another in a way that did damage to more areas than it helped.

The Liberal Democrats are committed to allowing communities to take action to improve their area. Given sufficient powers and resources, local authorities can play a major role in responding to climate and nature emergencies, whether through the insulation of homes, enhancing green spaces or improving air quality. However, the Conservative Government forced councils to do more and more with less and less, plunging many into financial crisis. As a result, councils have gone bankrupt around the country, and many are feeling the strain of cuts to public services and a lack of investment in community assets.

No community can flourish without proper powers and resources, so we welcome the plan’s commitment to ensuring that new neighbourhood boards work with local authorities to implement new funding. However, we urge the Government to confirm that local authorities will be funded and resourced substantially to take on this additional workload.

The financial burden on councils has forced many to make impossible choices on funding. In my council of Somerset, for example, nearly 70% of council tax receipts go on care for vulnerable adults and children, which many believe should be a national responsibility. Until we have a national solution to the care crisis, councils will continue to be held back from reaching their full potential. We welcome the Government’s commitment to investing in community-led improvement.

We also welcome the new neighbourhood boards, which should provide community engagement throughout the process. We urge the Government to reconsider their decision to remove district council-level scrutiny from the planning process. Where Whitehall takes power and decisions out of the hands of local councillors, it also takes decisions out of the hands of local people. That is undemocratic and will ultimately slow up the process of getting the homes that we need. We also call on the Government to confirm that nature and climate specialists will be included on the neighbourhood boards. Finally, can I ask the Minister—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. I remind the hon. Member that there is a time limit. I will give him one more sentence.

[Gideon Amos]

Apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker. Will the Secretary of State review the list of 75 towns, so that others can be included in future? Finally, will the Government consider rolling the plans into neighbourhood plans, so that they are given more statutory effect when planning decisions are made?