Plan for Neighbourhoods

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 4th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The Minister referred to his support for parish and town councils. Can he explain a little more about the neighbourhood boards? Will their geographical footprint be similar to that of parish and town councils in the 75 areas concerned? If so, would it not have been better to give this role to elected bodies, such as parish and town councils, rather than to unelected new boards?

[Alex Norris]

The elected body that will be the fundholder will be a local authority. As I have said, in only one case do the arrangements differ from those for the other councils, apart from parish and town councils. As for the boundaries, they reflect the human rather than the political geographies; there may or may not be points of alignment. The best models will have a local political as well as a local community say—I think that that balance can be found—but if there are concerns about boundaries, now is a very short moment in which that could be revisited. There is not much flexibility to change the scope completely, but if sensible tweaks can be made, we will of course have the necessary conversations.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Phase 2 Report

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments, and I am certainly happy to look at that recommendation. We accepted in full all the recommendations that the phase 2 report came out with; that is an important baseline, but I am happy to look at what more we can do.

Turning to social housing, we will set out plans in the autumn Budget to give councils and housing associations the rent stability that they need in order to borrow and invest in new and existing homes, while also ensuring appropriate protections for existing and future housing tenants. We will bring forward details of future Government investment in the forthcoming spending review, and we will keep that issue under review.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Leaseholders listening to the Deputy Prime Minister’s very comprehensive statement will have heard her mention the role of developers in remediation for blocks covered in inadequate and dangerous cladding. Can she explain in more detail what happens when developers have defaulted in some way and are no longer in existence, and freeholders then seek to visit the costs of remediation on the innocent leaseholders? I think the legislation covers those situations to some extent, but it would be helpful if the Deputy Prime Minister provided more detail.

[Angela Rayner]

Those freeholders will get access to the cladding remediation scheme. We are really clear that building owners must fix their buildings—there is no doubt about that—and there are already legal powers to force landlords to act. We will make them do so quicker and give them a harder bite, but we also recognise that in some situations, that will not happen. That is why the cladding remediation scheme is available.

Planning Committees: Reform

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

As I said in response to a previous question, part of the objective of the proposals set out in the working paper is to test whether they will facilitate the speedy delivery of homes and places that our communities need. My hon. Friend is right that speed is part of the challenge, but there is also a big challenge around the capacity and capability of local planning departments. We consulted on changes to application fees and localisation of such fees in the recent consultation on the NPPF. The Department has a dedicated planning capacity and capability programme that directs support at local authorities, but we hope the £46 million package of investment secured in the Budget will go some way to supporting local planning authorities with the help they need on capacity and capability. That is a hugely important part of the system, and we need to support those who want to do the right thing.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

In an exchange a few moments ago, the Minister seemed to agree that this measure is designed to fight nimbyism. I understand what nimbyism means when it relates to an individual objector or a group of objectors, but when it relates to the members of a planning committee, that suggests that the Minister regards an elected body of specialist councillors as people who are saying “not in my back yard”, when in fact they are considering the welfare of their communities. Would he like to think about that point again?

[Matthew Pennycook]

In general terms, I find the yimby versus nimby debate incredibly reductive; it does not get to heart of some of the challenges that we face with our planning system. We are not accusing elected councillors across the country of acting in a knee-jerk, nimby way. We are saying to them that there is a way to streamline the process, where we can focus their time and energy on those applications that are significant or controversial, and allow trained planning officers to make decisions in other areas, in accordance with up-to-date local plans, which are the best ways that communities have to shape development in their area.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. The Government are acutely aware that far too many leaseholders across the country are routinely subject to unjustified permissions and administration fees, unreasonable or extortionate charges, and onerous conditions that are imposed with little or no consultation. That is not what home ownership should entail, and it is why we must bring the system to an end in this Parliament. As I set out in the written ministerial statement to which I referred earlier, the Government will act to protect leaseholders from abuse and poor service at the hands of unscrupulous managing agents, such as the ones my hon. Friend mentioned, by strengthening regulation in this area.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

May I thank the Minister for the answers that he has given me in this Chamber, and in a written answer at the end of October, on the plight of leaseholders who have extra apartment levels grafted on above the blocks in which they live? I appreciate that he does not want to alter the planning presumption in favour of granting permission to build add-on extra levels, but will he at least consider outlawing any attempt by freeholders to pass on the cost of botched extensions to the poor old leaseholders, who have suffered enough by having such extensions built over their heads in the first place?

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question and recognise his constituent’s experience. As outlined in the King’s Speech, the Government are committed to bringing the injustice of “fleecehold” private estates and unfair costs to an end. We will consult in due course on the best way to achieve that. In the interim, as I said, we need to implement the new protections for homeowners on private estates in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024. That will create a new regulatory framework to make estate management companies more accountable to homeowners for how their money is spent.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Against my wishes and advice, the previous Government brought in a planning presumption in favour of applications to add extra floors to apartment blocks, irrespective of the horrible effect of building those extra floors, and attempts by rogue freeholders to sting the leaseholders for the remedial works resulting from errors in building grafted-on extra floors. As a short-term measure, will the Minister consider removing that presumption in favour of planning permission for these ill-considered schemes?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for raising that point. He is absolutely right that the previous Government significantly expanded permitted development rights after 2013. We acknowledge the criticism of those expanded rights, particularly because of the low-quality development that they have brought forward. He raises a specific issue for leaseholders, but the problem goes wider than that. I am more than happy to give consideration to the point he raises.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 2nd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

The distinct set of problems faced by residential freeholders that my hon. Friend describes are well known and understood. As we set out in our manifesto, the Government are committed to bringing the injustice of fleecehold private housing estates and unfair maintenance costs to an end. We intend to consult publicly on the best way to achieve that. In the interim, we will move to implement the new protections against unfair charges that were contained in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for expressing the wish of many of us to see this awful system disposed of. Will he draw his colleagues’ attention to the fact that people like me, living in a leasehold block, have the experience of winning a first tier tribunal hearing against a freeholder, but still awaiting the refunding of the sums of money that were wrongly taken from us in the first place? The freeholder simply ignores everything and carries on as if nothing had happened.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. He draws attention to one of the many failings of the feudal leasehold system, which is precisely why we finally intend to end it by the end of this Parliament.

Local Government Officials: Bullying

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I rise to consider the potential merit of Government measures to tackle the bullying of local government officials. This short debate seeks to explore the Government’s plans properly to provide for enforcement of the codes of conduct applicable to parish and town councillors, given the amount of bullying and intimidation experienced by local council clerks.

Far too many town and parish council clerks face regular intimidation by a minority of councillors, and there are at present insufficient enforcement mechanisms and penalties to resolve the issue. Good people are resigning as a result. The turnover rate for clerks is far greater than the average for most comparable forms of employment. An article in the Telegraph online on 1 October 2022 stated that a preliminary academic survey of town and parish councils

“found that over half…had experienced behavioural issues from councillors, including bullying and disrespect towards other representatives or clerks”.

The findings also showed

“an imminent loss of expertise amid a shortage of younger clerks”.

There are at least three important organisations with strong views about this worrying situation: the Association of Local Council Clerks, the National Association of Local Councils and the Society of Local Council Clerks. They are not unanimous in their recommendations, but they all recognise the reality of the crisis. All three have had constructive conversations with my staff and me in recent months, for which I am very grateful. The SLCC has stated:

“15% of parish councils experience serious behaviour issues… 5% are effectively dysfunctional as a result of them.”

That figure obviously varies to a degree over time, but the ALCC has recently indicated that it considers the problem to be worsening rather than improving.

I have been provided with deeply disturbing first-hand testimony of inappropriate behaviour by a small percentage of council members. It may only be one or two individuals on any given council, but the effect of their behaviour on the clerks, other councillors and other staff can be unbearable. It can easily cause a breakdown in health and subsequent departure from a much-valued career. Clerks often feel that their job is at risk unless they carry out the wishes of individual councillors, even though the councillor in question may be trying to act outside the legislative requirements, thus forcing the clerk to act illegally. I am advised that many clerks fear for their jobs on a daily basis.

In my view, much of the problem arises from the lack of an independent body to oversee councillor behaviour and to impose sufficient penalties to discourage such behaviour when it occurs. Sufficient codes of conduct are in place for councillors. They are usually clear, unambiguous and based on the Nolan principles, but their enforcement and the imposition of appropriate penalties when their provisions are broken are sadly missing. The standards board was abolished in 2012, and the current system of local authority staff enforcement —via monitoring officers—does not work as effectively as would an independent system. In May 2023, it was confirmed that, nationally, there is an excessive turnover of monitoring officers. That is hardly surprising, given that they have to take action in a quasi-judicial role, sometimes against their own councillors, who are their employers at principal authority level, while those councillors also possibly sit on town or parish councils, too.

As I mentioned, it is not only staff but other councillors who find themselves being bullied. I shall not identify any specific councils or individuals in this speech, yet I know of one case where several councillors resigned during a three-year period because of bullying by the chairman of that council. In a separate case, two councillors were called upon to step down after their attempts to bully the council clerk out of her job were proven. A third council was plunged into disarray after eight members resigned amid claims of bullying, harassment and abuse, and the town clerk also resigned at the same time and for the same reason.

There are very many specific examples which could be cited, because such misconduct has become so common as almost to be routine on the part of a really small but poisonous minority of councillors. Of course, the vast majority of councillors neither accept nor condone such terrible behaviour, but they do not have the necessary means to deal effectively with the disruptors and the bullies.

--- Later in debate ---

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Mark Fletcher.)

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Here is one scenario posted on the internet by a despairing councillor:

“We have a Parish Councillor who continually harasses the Clerk out of hours, at home and by email, about pretty well everything the Clerk does. The Clerk is respectful, knowledgeable and more than capable; but this individual said to the Chairman ‘I can question the Clerk because I am a Parish Councillor’. We have lost three Clerks in less than three years because of this dreadful man and I fear we are going to lose this one.”

Given findings such as the academic survey I mentioned earlier, this is clearly a situation that must not be allowed to continue. Apart from the impropriety aspect, the turnover of staff caused by bullying is economically damaging, leading to severe loss of efficiency in the affected parish and town councils. Then there are the additional recruitment and training costs for those councils which lose their clerks through resignation. Several councils have also been taken to court for constructive dismissal claims relating to harassment. Once again, this would be much less likely to arise if there were proper regulation and proper enforcement.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am really grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for bringing forward this debate. I have a long-term interest in looking at workplace bullying across the piece and am bringing forward a private Member’s Bill on 7 June to ensure we have a legal definition for bullying, which we currently do not have in our suite of legislation. I hope he will be able to support the Bill. But beyond that, we must ensure there is a route to an employment tribunal so that people are protected at work. Would he be minded to work with me and support that, and to find the mechanisms to put positive behaviours into all workplaces?

[Sir Julian Lewis]

This is the first I have heard about the hon. Lady’s initiative. It sounds absolutely admirable and I would be very interested in supporting her efforts. I particularly commend the idea of a clear and legal definition of bullying, because we all know that there are sometimes subjective approaches to the subject, where even a word of legitimate criticism is interpreted as that, unjustifiably, so she is definitely on the right track.

The SLCC states:

“Throughout the sector, there are growing concerns about the impact bullying, harassment and intimidation is having on Councils, Councillors and staff and the resulting effectiveness of those local councils”.

The three national associations are fully aware of the issues, but without Government intervention it is unlikely that they alone can solve this dreadful problem. The preferred approach of the NALC is to focus on certain recommendations, previously made by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which have yet to be adopted. Indeed, the NALC assisted me in the drafting of early-day motion 611, tabled in November 2022 and supported by 27 hon. and right hon. Members, which specifically asked the Government to:

“re-visit its response to the Committee on Standards in Public Life report on local government ethical standards and introduce the report’s recommendations in full including tougher sanctions such as suspension for poorly behaving councillors.”

In addition to that, however, the SLCC and the ALCC have indicated their endorsement of an alternative option formulated by Mr Derek Biggs, the hugely experienced and highly respected former town clerk of Totton in my constituency, to whom I am indebted for his insights. This way forward, which I fully support, would be for the Minister to agree to set up a working party of experts in the area of town and parish councils to examine the issue in depth and recommend practical solutions to deal with it. The working party’s brief would be to ensure the design and establishment of an appropriate, independent enforcement body, and to propose legislation providing for penalties sufficient to act as a deterrent to transgressors. That would be one way of finally dealing with those who ignore the proper standards of behaviour that are rightly expected and approved by the Government. We really need to work together and end their sense of impunity in respect of unacceptable conduct in town and parish councils.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Simon Hoare)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) for raising this important subject, and also to the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) for her helpful intervention. I look forward to her Bill.

I have been urged to be brief. As a fellow Welshman, Mr Deputy Speaker, you will know that that can sometimes be quite tricky, but I understand from my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher), the Whip on duty, that he is keen to rush home to start making his cheese and pineapple hedgehogs in preparation for his Eurovision Song Contest party; we all look forward, of course, to his extended invitation. So I want to be serious but also to be as brief as I can, in respect for the House.

The debate is timely, because it comes just a week after elections to many of our town and parish councils up and down the land. I want to take the opportunity—as I have on previous occasions when I have met parish councillors—to put on record our sincere thanks for their service to their communities. They are always unpaid and usually unsung heroes, working to deliver change and improvements to the towns and villages in which they live and serve. I suppose I should declare a slight interest, having started my political career as a parish councillor before migrating to the district council, supposedly moving upwards to the county council, and then fetching up here. With the exception of membership of the other place, I have the full set of badges.

My right hon. Friend’s point is particularly important because the councillors elected last week are being welcomed to their new authorities and being inducted—for the first time, in some instances—into the rules and conventions of public life. We all know that vibrant local democracy flourishes where the reputation of the local authority is held in high regard. It is an honour and a privilege to serve as a community representative, and all those seeking and achieving public office should be holding themselves to the highest standards of conduct in recognition of the trust placed in them. The electorate have a right to expect councillors to behave well and respectfully in all their interactions—with each other, with members of staff, and with the public. Councillors’ decision making should be honest, demonstrably transparent, fair, objective, and in the best interests of all whom they serve. There is no place in our systems and structures of local government for bullying, intimidation or harassment.

My right hon. Friend’s remarks focused on bullying, intimidation and other inappropriate behaviour on the part of councillors. As he will know, there have been incidents where council clerks have effectively been charged with such offences, so it can go both ways. It is important to nip it in the bud and cut it out as quickly as possible—not just for the standards in public life set out by Nolan and reiterated this afternoon, but because it fundamentally sours the working environment of public service when people abuse their position, bully, cajole, intimidate and so forth in council meetings. As my right hon. Friend has noted, there are rules that apply.

I am concerned that we still occasionally think of our town councils, and especially our parish councils, as some sort of quaint, Edwardian and Vicar of Dibley-like institutions where people quibble about whose turn it is to do the biscuits or whatever. Instead, they are doing incredibly important work. As my right hon. Friend will know, there is no cap that we in central Government can place on the precepts of town and parish councils; we merely rely on their good common sense.

We know that many town and parish councils across the land have been asked to take up roles and responsibilities—the management of public loos, for example—on behalf of their upper-tier authorities, and they willingly do so. Those upper-tier authorities—be they borough, district or county councils—can be capped, and when there has been pressure on local government finances and close collaboration between the constituent parts of the local government family, some burdens have been passed on to lower-tier authorities.

My right hon. Friend is right to point out that there are some standards lacunae—I put it no more firmly than that. As he set out in some detail, there is a clear and growingly compelling case for having a look at this issue again. I would be more than happy to continue the conversations that I have had with NALC since I was appointed last November. I would include the ALCC and the SLCC, and I am more than happy to include my right hon. Friend in those discussions to try to find a common-sense route to go through.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I shall seize on that potential opportunity to ask whether we could all come and see the Minister together. There are a lot of operators in this field, and to have him and representatives of the three organisations in the same room at the same time would be an extremely positive step.

[Simon Hoare]

I began my working day with an official visit to Croydon Council, followed by a visit to Slough Borough Council. Both were hugely enjoyable and rewarding, and the offer of being seized by my right hon. Friend during this Adjournment debate is an invitation I cannot resist. He makes a very important point, and I should have made that clear in my remarks. There is considerable and compelling merit to meeting the three bodies together. There is some overlap and some divergence of views, and different organisations will have different ways of seeing and identifying solutions to a problem. Let us have a roundtable, if one wants to call it that, or a meeting in the Department to try to identify the issues, and to try to deliver the simplest, easiest and most straight-forward solutions.

We would do so not to be unduly heavy-handed, or to impose the dead hand of Marsham Street on our vibrant town and parish councils, but because we hold dear, and view to be important and precious, those values of civility, transparency, decency, common sense and collegiality in all the fora in which elected or appointed people discharge public duties. That is an expectation that the public rightly place on all of us, and it is sometimes a challenge, but it is one to which we are all capable of rising. I look forward to furthering the discussion with my right hon. Friend.

I close by again thanking the hon. Member for York Central for her contribution, but I particularly thank my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East who, with his usual calm, methodical logic, put forward a compelling case that only a perverse Minister of the Crown could seek to resist.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is absolutely vital there is transparency in how, when and why leaseholders are being charged. That is why we have done one thing and been doing another thing in the past few weeks alone. Last week, on the new building safety approach for high-rise buildings, we were very clear in a joint letter about highlighting the importance of temperate remuneration and cost. Secondly, we need to continue to bring forward the reforms in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill, which will see a transformation in transparency on service charges. The Government brought that Bill forward and it will come through as soon as the other place has concluded its observations.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The Minister has done good work in protecting leaseholders and renters from remediation costs above 11 metres. As a leaseholder myself, I am a bit baffled as to why people are not protected when fire remediation measures are necessary below 11 metres. I would be grateful if he could explain the Government’s reasoning.

[Lee Rowley]

When the Building Safety Act 2022, which put in place the differentiation, was going through, we were very clear and asked colleagues, on the Floor of the House, for any examples of where there were potential issues below 11 metres. If my right hon. Friend or any other Member has an issue, I would be very keen to hear from them. The reality is that, over the past two years nearly, we have received only 160 potential issues. Of those, we can count on one hand where there has been a problem. We are working with each of those three buildings to make the progress we need to make.

Extremism Definition and Community Engagement

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Surely the essential point here is that the Government are proposing not to ban any organisation, however extreme, from operating legally and within the law, but to identify organisations that should be barred from receiving funding or other support from the Government. They have not shared their proposals with the Intelligence and Security Committee, so any point that I make now is purely personal to me, but does the Secretary of State agree that in any democratic society people have a right to decide with which bodies they will or will not associate? That is why it is right that, since July 2021, Labour has banned no fewer than seven extreme-left organisations as incompatible with party membership, in accordance with values defined, quite properly, by its own national executive committee.

[Michael Gove]

I thank my right hon. Friend, who has a distinguished record in this area. He is absolutely right. There is, appropriately, a very high threshold for the proscription of organisations, which Hizb ut-Tahrir recently met. We are not seeking to ban or restrict the operation of organisations in a free society; we are simply making it clear that it would be wrong for the Government to use taxpayers’ money or public endorsement in engagement with such organisations.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Julian Lewis Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 11th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I take the right hon. Gentleman’s point, but he is conflating two things. Help to Buy can be criticised or defended on its own terms, and I believe it was the right intervention to ensure, in particular, that more first-time buyers could get on to the property market. However, he is also right that leasehold, which as he says was originally a tenure designed for flats, was then extended to houses, and in a way that is difficult to defend. It has expanded over recent years. That is why we are legislating now to ensure that we can stop it. There are two separate arguments that can be had there.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I particularly look forward to that part of the Secretary of State’s speech when he will tell us whether this will apply to new leaseholds or will be retrospective on those suffering under existing leasehold arrangements. However, there is one step the Government took that has not been helpful to leaseholders, and of which I have personal experience: creating a presumption in favour of developments where the airspace above a block of flats is sold and the freeholder then insists on having one or two more floors built on top. That can cause immense damage to the building, not to mention disruption, and then who gets the bill for paying for the damage? It is transferred from the freeholder to the leaseholders. The Government should think again about that presumption in allowing that sort of ill-considered development.

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point on permitted development rights. On the whole, I am in favour of the extension of permitted development rights, because I want to see an increase in housing supply overall, but it is incumbent on the Government to review how those rights have been operating. He raises one concern, but there are other legitimate concerns about the way permitted development rights, when commercial buildings have been turned into residential, have meant that the quality of those new residential flats has been insufficiently high. I also know that colleagues, not least in London, are concerned about potential future extensions of permitted development rights. There is a responsibility on me and others to review their impact, and that is what we are doing, separate from this particular legislation.