Coalfield Communities

Josh Newbury Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)]

It is an honour to speak in this debate as the Member of Parliament for Cannock Chase, an area deeply proud of its mining heritage. Collieries were our dominant industry from the mid- 19th century right up until the early 1990s. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) on securing this debate and enabling us to speak on behalf of our coalfield communities. As a fellow Staffordshire MP, I know that he is a dedicated advocate for the town and villages that he represents. He referred to the Diglake mining disaster; in Cannock Chase on 1 October we will mark the 95th anniversary of the Grove colliery disaster in the North Lanes area of Norton Canes, which claimed the lives of 14 men.

My constituents are rightly proud of where they live. Often, generations remain in the area for their whole lives, which shows the real sense of community and local identity. However, my constituents often tell me that we desperately need investment in the bread-and-butter infrastructure that supports thriving communities, such as capacity at GPs, dentists and primary schools, good quality roads and regeneration of our town centres. Regeneration is vital because in all too many coalfield communities there is still a feeling that, decades on, we have not all recovered from the rapid destruction of the coalmining industry in the 1980s and 1990s.

At the 2019 general election, many of my constituents were tempted by the siren song of levelling up from the then Prime Minister. My constituents have been crying out for the promise of big-bang regeneration across communities such as mine for a very long time. Our main town of Cannock was successful in securing £20 million from the levelling-up fund in 2021, but the reality of the fund has been far more complex than even my local council envisaged four years ago. First of all, its rigidity in awarding funding to one town pits communities against one another and does not reflect the more balanced approach to regeneration that councils such as mine would take if given the freedom. Secondly, the focus on large, complex and therefore risky projects with fixed budgets, coupled with high inflation, has forced councils with LUF projects to repeatedly re-evaluate what they can deliver.

On several occasions, Members will have heard me raise the plight of the Prince of Wales theatre in Cannock and the Museum of Cannock Chase in Hednesford, which are threatened with closure. The museum, based in the buildings of the former Valley colliery, is a much- loved hub for our proud mining heritage. Our theatre is playing its part in keeping our heritage alive, too, such as in the new play “The Tunnellers”, which tells the story of the heroic men of the tunnelling companies in the first world war, many of whom worked on the Cannock Chase coalfield.

A redevelopment of our theatre was to be at the heart of our LUF project, but the effects of inflation to have forced the council to scale back the project, and the theatre is now set to close. Fortunately, a fantastic group of residents have formed a community interest company with a view to taking on the Prince of Wales. I pay tribute to them and, as I stated at a public meeting that I organised last Friday, I will continue to work shoulder to shoulder with them to secure a bright, sustainable future for the theatre, and our museum, too. I very much hope that our council will use the levelling-up funds to help secure the long-term future of the theatre.

The difficulties faced by Cannock’s LUF project underline the flaws of the funding model. I am encouraged to see this Government’s commitment to replacing the dog-eat-dog bidding wars with a system based on need and what our communities want. Alongside my colleagues, I hope to see coalfield communities benefit from local growth funding, maintained at the current level at least, long-term funding that does not lead to a rapid dash to spend by arbitrary deadlines, and the genuine empowerment of local councils, which will always know their communities better than Whitehall.

Finally, the Coalfields Regeneration Trust, which has done fantastic work in our communities for 25 years, was forced by the previous Government to become a self-financing charity. Despite the inevitable scaling back of its capacity to invest, its brilliant model of generating income from building new industrial units for small and medium-sized businesses in coalfield communities is enabling it to carry on its fantastic work. The CRT’s objectives and investments perfectly align with this Government’s ambition for economic growth that is spread right across the country while bearing down on the barriers that all too often affect coalfield communities more than most.

Our communities, which once powered the nation, are bursting with potential and passionate, hard-working people with a diverse range of skills and a pride in our past, strengthened by hope for the future. I am proud to be part of a Labour Government who are once again unleashing that potential for the good of the people we all represent.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Oral Answers to Questions

Josh Newbury Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

We want to put in place a planning system that is geared towards meeting housing need in full. That is a clear difference between us and the Conservative party. In bringing forward its local plan and looking at development, every local area should look first at densification—that is, what it can do on brownfield land. It should only have to review green-belt land if it cannot meet the needs in that way or via cross-boundary strategic planning.

[Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)]

Last week, my local council announced the proposed closure of the much-loved Prince of Wales theatre in Cannock. Despite the council’s financial pressures, local people do not want that theatre to become collateral damage. Will the Minister meet me to see what could be done to explore community ownership and give our theatre the bright future that thousands of my constituents want to see?

[Alex Norris]

As my hon. Friend knows, I am very keen on community ownership, and I am sad to hear about the situation in his community. I would definitely steer him towards the “asset of community value” process in the immediate term, and of course, I would be very happy to meet him and campaigners on this issue.

Cross-Boundary Housing Developments

Josh Newbury Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)]

I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) on securing this debate on an important but often overlooked issue. Having known him for many years before we took up our new roles, I can say with authority that his constituents will be well served in this House, particularly because they, like mine, are represented here by one of their local councillors. I too want to draw attention to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which includes my ongoing unpaid role as a district councillor for my home village of Norton Canes.

As councillors, we know that cross-border developments can cause various complications, which I am sure are seldom considered when developments are brought forward. We all know that council boundaries do not always reflect local communities, and that is inevitable to some extent, with boundaries going down the middle of main roads, for example. It is not particularly logical or necessary, however, to have housing estates or even individual homes divided between different council areas.

I am a bit of a local government nerd, so I could give many examples from close to where I live and across my region, but I will spare the House that and focus on my constituency. On the north-east edge of Cannock Chase, we have a small estate nonsensically split between Brereton and Ravenhill, in my constituency, and Armitage with Handsacre in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson). This is reflected in council boundaries as well, so there is clearly an impact on our local services. However, a far bigger cross-border development is fast approaching in the form of the redevelopment of the huge former Rugeley power station site. When it was a 1,000 MW power station, nobody particularly knew or minded where the boundary was. My predecessor and the former Member for Lichfield would often joke about which of the cooling towers were in each of their patches. But once 2,300 homes, around 900 of which will be in Cannock Chase, have been built, this could become a major issue.

Rugeley already has several developments on its fringes, which are outside our boundary, including the Hawkesyard estate and Hathorn Grove. The vast majority of those new residents feel that they live in Rugeley and go into Rugeley for various services, yet their lower-tier local authority council tax goes to Lichfield district council. This means that any service that draws on district council resources is strained by an inconsistent council tax base. The same is true of parish and town council services.

This is not just about services that residents go out to use, but about the services that come to them at home—bin collections, for example. We also know that NHS commissioning decisions, for example on special educational needs and disabilities provision, are sometimes done on a district by district basis. The chronic lack of general practice capacity in Rugeley and Brereton will be a major issue for the new power station development unless our integrated care board acts quickly.

There can sometimes be a democratic deficit, as residents in those cross-border developments are split between different council areas and different parliamentary constituencies. Knowing who to contact about various local issues can be challenging enough as it is, without estates being bisected by boundaries that make no sense. Sometimes, those boundaries are tidied up through ward or constituency boundary reviews, but we know that the process of changing council boundaries can happen only at the request of both councils. Clearly there is no incentive for the council that benefits from council tax payers who do not tend to use its services to consent to a principal area boundary review. As the hon. Member for Mid Leicestershire said, those councils have all the benefits and none of the drawbacks. That process can also be cumbersome, so it rarely happens, even when a small move in a boundary would be the logical thing to do. Given that our constituency boundaries are often based on council boundaries, such discrepancies are often not corrected for Westminster elections either.

I do not come here with any oven-ready solutions, although it does strike me that in other countries—Canada for example—local authorities can, with appropriate oversight, annex territory from others to prevent these cross-border challenges and inefficiencies from arising. I hope that the Government will consider how we can better address these challenges. Any solutions that we can come to will certainly greatly benefit community identity and local services.