English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Earl of Lytton

Committee stage
Wednesday 11th February 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest in that I live in the middle of this problem: Eastbourne and Hastings have district councils and no parishes, so when we go unitary, we will be without any form of local structure.

Will the Minister publish the draft regulations before we get to Report? We are supposed to see plans for Sussex going unitary sometime in March or April. It will be enormous. We are at the moment undergoing a consultation process on whether we have a town council or a succession of parishes, or whether we look to the unitary model and have a local structure that embraces the whole of Eastbourne. The borough of Eastbourne has grown enormously beyond its boundaries. If we want to be seen as a big community, we need those big boundaries. We want to be a whole town, thank you very much. If we are to be parishes, we will still need to understand what we will interact with at the unitary neighbourhood panel or structure—whatever it is going to be. For us, this is an enormously important bit of knowledge. We are being asked to decide things at the moment, but we are not being told what the most important factor is: how will the unitary structure these things?

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

In my view, a process of parishing does not consist of the dividing up of a borough—if I can call it that—such as Eastbourne into a load of little bits and pieces. That may be the way in which it is being presented because of the electoral ward structure that pertains at the moment but, as I said, there are some very large town councils—Weston-super-Mare is one and I am sure that there are others—that have very significant populations. The question is: what best forms community in the area concerned? I suggest to the noble Lord, for whose continued and creditable battling for Eastbourne I have the highest regard, that he should perhaps look into that and see whether a form of parishing to create a town council would not be a better way forward.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I can understand that, but how does a big town council for 100,000 or so people actually work within a unitary of half a million people, given that the town council will have the powers of a parish only and most of the decisions will be taken by the unitary? The important structure at the level of the town will not be the town council, with its rather artificially constrained boundaries, but the local unitary neighbourhood—whatever it calls itself—with the rather expanded boundaries, and the budget, and responsibility for all the things that we want to happen, which the town council will not have any of. If we are looking at parishes, we do not want them on ward boundaries. Ward boundaries have grown to fit the needs of the Electoral Commission. If we are having parishes, we want them to represent communities, which we do not have with our ward boundaries.