Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Nigel Evans Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I remind everybody that if they have participated in the debate, they should be here for the wind-ups.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

Finally, if I went back to my constituents or, I suspect, those of any other Members in so-called levelling-up areas, and said, “Have you seen the benefits of levelling up in the last three years? Can you tell me the difference?”, I suspect the answer would probably be no, but no doubt the Minister will try to reassure us it is not.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Following the last speaker, we will move on to the ministerial response.

[Bob Seely]

I am going to speak to new clause 34, and may make some broader points, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) did—I thank her for her great work and leadership on this issue. There are many good ideas that we have been discussing on all sides of the House today, and it is great to see such a brilliant Minister in her role and dealing with this Bill. Indeed, quite a few Ministers have been dealing with it, but I am glad that the buck has stopped with her. I welcome all and any measures to support levelling up.

The Isle of Wight is rich in so many ways, but economically is not necessarily one of them. We have a wonderful sense of community and a wonderful quality of life, but if I can achieve one thing in this place, it is to improve Islanders’ life chances and opportunities. I am delighted that in the last five years the Government have been listening more than they have done previously. We have got £120 million of additional investment. There is £48 million for the NHS—the build at St Mary’s is due to start in the next two weeks—and £26 million to rebuild the Island line. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago I was at Ryde Pier with my little hard hat on—a Boris look-alike or whatever—because the rebuild of the railway pier is now happening as well.

The hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) asked what levelling up has done. Actually, we have got a 240-ton-lift crane in East Cowes for our shipyard, which will drive dozens of new jobs and apprenticeships in shipbuilding on the Isle of Wight. The clippers that we see going up and down the Thames are made on the Island. We have lots of great things, including in training for Isle of Wight College.

One of the many things said by the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), which really sticks with me is that, “Talent is shared out equality in our nation, but opportunity isn’t.” We feel that, in a poorer part of a rich area.

I turn to compulsory purchase. If we go to any town or city in this country, apart from brownfield—I will come to that—we see long-term empty, derelict buildings. In coastal areas, as the Minister will know—it is fantastic that she has agreed to come to the Island and we very much look forward to hosting her—that problem is especially acute, particularly with former hotels. In Sandown, which is a town with a really lovely, wonderful community, some of our most important and valuable sites have stood empty for years. The Grand hotel is owned by a developer who seems to be unwilling to develop his own properties. The technical ownership of the Ocean hotel seems to change every month as it is flipped through a series of highly questionable companies. It is one of the most important sites in Sandown, and it is derelict and vandalised. We need the compulsory purchase powers. I respect property rights, but actually we need those powers to be as strong as possible so that communities such as mine and the Isle of Wight Council can use them to do good.

I am going to try this argument: I want to be able to get the Isle of Wight Council to compulsory purchase from the Government. Camp Hill prison site—the third prison site on the Island—has been empty for nine years. For five years I have been asking for a decision on Camp Hill. The Government cannot decide whether they want to turn it back into a prison, give us the land, sell it privately and so on. If they can give us that land at a price that we can afford, we can do real good with it, and we can build homes.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet made the point that we want to propose good stuff. That is why, among 20 amendments and new clauses that we tabled, we have proposed new clause 34. There is an incredibly trite conversation around the issue, suggesting that those who object to top-down targets and the entirely depressing reliance on out-of-town, car-dependent housing estates plonked down in the middle of nowhere are somehow anti-young people or nimbys—a nimby is a local patriot, in my opinion—shouting, “No, no, no,” with their heads in the ground like ostriches. Actually, we are saying, “Yes, yes, yes” to so many ideas—we are trying to give the Government so many ideas—because we want planning and housing to be a success. We want to protect communities and, at the same time, we recognise that we need to build, but we want a system that is community-centred, environment-centred—environmentally friendly—and regeneration-centred.

When we have acre after acre of brownfield sites in towns and cities up and down the country, what on earth is the point of being reliant on developers lazily building on greenfield sites? That alienates older people in communities—they have their dog-walking routes and views ruined—yet so often, and especially in the home counties, those houses cannot be afforded by young people. All that happens is people move out of London. That is a problem in Essex, Kent and Hampshire. On the Island, the dynamic is slightly different because people retire to us, but either way, despite having increased our population by 50% in 50 years, one of the most depressing facts is that we still export our young people too often.

New clause 34, which would give us compulsory powers to act in the public good, is only one of a series of, I hope, good ideas supported by my right hon. Friend, me and many people. For example, I think that for new clause 21, on top-down targets, we have more than 55 colleagues. Regardless of what the Labour party does, we need to work together. We want to work together with the Government in a spirit of co-operation, but can they please trust us and listen to us?

Another example of a good idea, apart from new clause 34, is the new clause on having a “Use it or lose it” rule to stop planners land-banking. I respectfully suggest to the Minister that a fundamental problem is not that planners do not give out permissions—80% get passed—or that pesky nimbys stop everything, because we know that is a load of rubbish. The fundamental problem is that developers have a vested interest in only releasing land for housing slowly, because that keeps the value of land high, house prices high, share prices high and bosses’ bonuses high. I sound a bit like I should be on the Opposition Benches. I am a big fan of capitalism, but I want capitalism to work. I want the developer industry to serve the people of this country, not its bosses.

We will achieve that by getting a system that works, so we want a new clause for “Use it or lose it.” We want a new clause that says, “Okay, you will have a time here and if you do not build out, you’re paying council tax on that 200-house estate. If you haven’t built it, you’re still paying council tax come what may.” We want bigger sticks. We want some nice carrots for brownfield, but we want bigger sticks for developers, so that when someone gets a 1,000-acre site they actually have to do something with it, and they cannot just sit on it and inflate their share price.

We want what is in the public interest. As soon as some people become Ministers, they think they know best—I am sure that this Minister does not think that—and they want top-down stuff, because that is where they drive reform. However, we know that a community with a neighbourhood plan is more likely to welcome development. Why? Because they get to shape it. All the so-called nimbys actually think, “Okay, here’s a home for my kids, a home for my daughter and son-in-law, a home for my grandkids.” They buy into it.

That is why top-down targets fundamentally do not work. They create an incredibly divisive battle. The Government say, “You have to build this many houses.” We get ridiculous, absurd numbers for the Isle of Wight, considering that our indigenous population is meant to decline by 9,000 over the next 15 years. We get targets and local government is put under pressure. The developers then start plonking down greenfield permissions, because they cannot be bothered to look at brownfield sites, which alienates communities. It becomes fundamentally divisive and adversarial.

Changing economic incentives would revolutionise development in this country, so that it becomes a win-win for communities. We could create more disincentives for greenfield sites—a super-tax—so that every plot on a greenfield site has to pay twice the amount as those on a brownfield site. Some brownfield sites are dirtier than others, but if we had a tax that said, “Okay, you are giving up 1,000 acres of greenfield site in Cambridgeshire, Kent or Hampshire, but you are getting 2,000 acres of cleaned-up brownfield site” that would be a win. That is something we could accept. We need to think in much more creative terms and to move away from an adversarial system. That is why another amendment—along with new clause 34, which we love—asks the Government to look at the creation of incentives for brownfield and greater disincentives for greenfield.

Fundamentally, with the exception of one or two things, the Government are going in the right direction, but they need to go further. Another example is the new clause on character tests. Some shoddy developers have criminal records. They intimidate people, do not treat communities properly, never build out or build poorly. Why can that not be a reason to object? Do we not want to clean up the development industry? Do we not want socially responsible developers who do the right thing for their communities and actually make an effort? They can be rewarded by us supporting their development planning applications and we can stop people who want to build caravan parks in the wrong place but use loopholes. That is another of our amendments—it is a great amendment—which would do real good, so why are the Government not accepting it?

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet and I, the 55 colleagues who signed new clause 21 on top-down housing targets, and many others, including the—I think—30 colleagues who signed new clause 34 on compulsory purchase, all want to say yes to this stuff. We want our communities to feel that development works for them—that it works for the old and young folks in communities, that it works to regenerate and that it works to protect our environment, which is so important to our future and which helps the whole process of community-led regeneration. In that spirit, we tabled new clause 34 and all the other wonderful amendments, which we look forward to discussing with the Government when they come up with a second date. My plea is for the Government to work with us on this issue, because want to make this a win-win, not a lose-lose.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Mike Amesbury will be the last speaker on a five-minute limit. I will indicate whether the new limit is to be four or three minutes as soon as he has finished.

[Mike Amesbury]

I rise to speak to my amendments 97 and 98, to my new clause 111 and to other amendments that I support.

After 12 years of pursuing policies that have wrecked and hollowed out communities and deepened inequalities, this Tory Government now say that they are the ones to repair the damage and that the so-called levelling-up agenda is the way to do it. The Bill exposes levelling up as the empty promise that it is. It will not ensure that our planning system delivers for us, it will not provide the genuinely affordable housing we need, and it will not put investment and power back into communities and people’s pockets. In fact, the current Government are doing exactly the opposite.

I support several Labour Front-Bench amendments, including amendments 78 and 84 and new clause 98. This Parliament declared a climate emergency in 2019, so it is somewhat bizarre that, years later, mitigation and adaptation are not hardwired into our planning system. New clause 98, which would do just that, is welcome. As it stands, the Bill will create a power grab by the centre and by the Secretary of State, undermining the local plans and neighbourhood plans that Members across the House have spoken for so strongly in this debate, so I strongly support amendment 78. If we are to build communities with the right houses in the right places that are genuinely affordable, with essential infrastructure and beautiful green spaces, they must be sufficiently funded. That is not the case now, has not been the case for 12 years and will not be the case under the Bill, which is why I am backing amendment 84.

I turn to the amendments that I have tabled. Amendment 97, which is supported by the Local Government Association, would provide local authorities with the certainty that they need about how to administer the levy in relation to retrospective planning applications; the Bill does not currently make provision for that. Amendment 98 would ensure that all forms of provision delivered through section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, including affordable housing, are not lost but continue to be delivered by the levy. Otherwise, important schemes that do not come under the definition of infrastructure, but are currently delivered through section 106—including apprenticeships, skills development, supporting the local workforce and supporting young people into employment—may be omitted. New clause 111 would have the same effect as new clause 94: by removing the clauses of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 that relate to the sale of vacant higher-value local authority housing, it would hold the Government to a commitment that they made in the social housing Green Paper.

I also support amendment 2, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). Rightly, it would add childcare, either subsidised or free, to the definition of infrastructure. It is common sense, it is the right thing to do and I wholly support it.

My amendments and many others tabled by Members across the House seek to add some substance to a discredited and vacuous slogan: namely, “levelling up”. Over the past 12 years, communities such as mine have been hollowed out, with facilities from leisure centres to libraries closed down and our high streets boarded up. We need something radically different. In fact, what we need is a Labour Government who will empower our communities, genuinely power up our communities, and fill people’s pockets with the money and opportunities they deserve.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

There will be a four-minute time limit. I call Sir John Hayes.

[Sir John Hayes]

Alongside purpose, a sense of pride nourishes personal and communal togetherness; it builds social solidarity. Where we begin, live life and end it roots our days and shapes our dreams. Homes matter because having a place of one’s own to build a family’s future makes those dreams come true. Those who advocate housing targets clinically miss the point. Making homes of which people can feel proud is what public policy must make possible.

The Government’s decision to drop mandatory housing targets, under which local communities have been obliged to endure seemingly endless and unsustainable development, is therefore wise and welcome, if overdue. I have been pleased to play my part, alongside other sensible colleagues, in encouraging that sharp turn in thinking. I am delighted that local communities and the councils they elect will no longer have housing imposed upon them. They will be in sole charge of what is built and where. Never again will the imposition of top-down targets be a justification for developments that are out of scale or character with the prevailing built environment or the local landscape. We have bolted on to villages and towns throughout this kingdom unsuitable and unsustainable housing estates of catalogue-build, identikit houses that bear no relation to the local vernacular and are, frankly, a very poor legacy to pass on to generations to come.

All that we build should make us proud. Our inheritance is what our forefathers built for us, and our responsibility is just as great as theirs. Development should, wherever possible, be regenerative, and it should be incremental. Every hamlet could take a few extra houses; every village could take more; towns many more than that; and cities, of course, many thousands. When we understand that development can be incremental, people will cease to object to it in the way they do currently.

There are those who dismiss beauty—they are crass to do so, because people deserve the chance to live in lovely places, including less well-off people. Unfortunately, that is too often not the case. I welcome the Government’s decision to put beauty at the heart of the housing agenda by raising design standards and making sure that developers and local planners adhere to those standards. It is also important that communities have their say. When they are faced with a choice between the ubiquitous kind of bland, identikit housing that peppers too much of our country or well-designed homes, they will usually choose the latter.

There is, however, concern about the industrialisation of the countryside resulting from the Government’s relaxation of the moratorium on onshore wind. It is critical that topography, visual impact, the connection to sites of special historical interest, areas of outstanding natural beauty and sites of special scientific interest, and the connection of turbines to the grid, are all taken into account. Not only is this a dangerous energy policy—I do not have time to explore that—but it also risks spoiling much of the English landscape and ruining vistas that are cherished by local people. If we really believe in local consent for housing, we must follow through and believe in local consent for that kind of infrastructure development, too.

As I have said, all that we build should add to what is there. We will be judged as a Parliament, and indeed as a generation, by what we pass on to generations to come.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and agree entirely that those regulations make it clear. It is a shame that the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), is not in her place, because she was a councillor with me in 2006 in Hammersmith and Fulham, where I, then charged with the community safety brief, used section 106 money in part to fund additional police officers in the town centres of that borough. There is precedent out there that we can use funds such as the predecessor to the infrastructure levy, to fund some level of revenue services. That is why I urge the Minister, when she sums up, to acknowledge that we can do that and be true localists, so that communities that determine that childcare provision is important are enabled to make those deals as part of their infrastructure levies.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Margaret Greenwood is the last Member with four minutes, and then we will move to a three-minute limit.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. This Bill introduces national development management policies, or NDMPs, which will have primacy over local development plans, meaning that those plans could be easily and rapidly rendered out of date by changes to national policies. My constituents who are campaigning to protect the green belt will be concerned about that, and I pay tribute to them and support their campaign.

The Bill states:

“If to any extent the development plan conflicts with a national development management policy, the conflict must be resolved in favour of the national development management policy”,

so local democratic processes for determining planning decisions could be seriously undermined. New clause 73 in my name would ensure that the Government cannot use NDMPs to allow housing to be built on green-belt land. It is remarkable that, despite the Bill introducing NDMPs, the Government have not set out what will be in their scope. Surely the Government would want to be clear about that before legislating for their introduction.

It is clear that, under the Conservatives, there has not been sufficient protection for the green belt. According to the Campaign to Protect Rural England, more than 42% of planning applications submitted for green-belt land in the 10 years to 2020 were granted, and importantly, the report also points out that there is sufficient brownfield land for more than 1 million homes.

Part 5 of the Bill replaces the current system of environmental impact assessments and strategic environmental assessments with a new environmental outcomes report regime. New clause 72 would require EOR regulations made under part 5 to be subject to the super-affirmative procedure to ensure a high level of scrutiny. EIAs and SEAs have been vital to the protection of sites of local, national and international environmental importance for decades. They set out and assess the impacts that developments may have on the environment, and help local authorities to decide on planning applications. It is a matter of extreme concern that a huge amount of detail—including information on which plans and projects EORs will apply to—is deferred to secondary legislation. In effect, the Bill gives a blank cheque to Ministers to change environmental protections in the planning system. The super-affirmative procedure should be used to provide much-needed greater parliamentary oversight.

The Bill currently states that, before making any EOR regulations that contain provision for what the specified environmental outcomes are to be, the Secretary of State must have regard to the current environmental improvement plan. This omits crucial considerations such as the preservation of the green belt, the protection of heritage and climate obligations, which should be central to any environmental assessment process. Amendment 63 addresses that omission. It is vital for the Secretary of State, as well as having regard to considerations such as protecting the green belt and meeting our climate obligations, to have regard to the protection of heritage when setting EOR regulations, because heritage and the historical character of the places where we live are immensely important.

The green belt is not safe in the hands of the Conservatives, and the Bill should be strengthened to provide much greater protections for it. People will not forgive politicians who concrete over the rural landscapes that they value so much. Nor can we trust this Government to protect the environment and address the climate emergency: that was made abundantly clear last week by the Secretary of State’s decision to grant permission for a new coal mine in Cumbria, a shocking decision which has attracted the attention, and the concern, of John Kerry, the United States climate envoy.

In 2019, the UK Parliament declared a climate and environment emergency. I call on the Government to accept new clauses 72 and 73 and amendment 63, which I believe would strengthen the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

But there is much more to do, and some councils are trying to thwart the aims of Parliament, either by counting every application as a self-build when it is not or by seeking to manipulate downwards the numbers on the registers by insisting on a local connection test, by charging a substantial fee or even by removing people’s names when they have not yet met their obligations to those registered individuals. My proposals would make it much more difficult for councils to behave in that way, and would substantially increase the likelihood that more supply will come forward, which is what we need if we are to create a world in which more people on ordinary incomes have the chance to bring forward their own schemes and have a dwelling of their own.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Happy wedding anniversary, Nickie Aiken!

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I want to speak in favour of Government new clause 119, to which I am delighted to add my name. The campaign for a register for short-term Airbnb-style properties has been long in the making. Before I came to this place, when I was a member of Philippa Roe’s cabinet on Westminster Council, we successfully lobbied the Government of the time—the coalition Government—to secure a 90-day limit for lettings in London under the Deregulation Act 2015. Mr Deputy Speaker, I hope you will allow me to pay tribute to Philippa Roe, Baroness Couttie, who lost her battle against cancer yesterday. I pay tribute to the brilliant work she did as a councillor.

It should therefore come as no surprise that I welcome the substance of the Government’s new clause 119, which would require the Secretary of State to make provision for a registration scheme for short-term rental properties. Legislating for such a scheme, let alone understanding the scale of the problem across the country, has been hampered over the past decade by a distinct lack of evidence and data. With this in mind, I would like to stress the importance of subsection 3 of new clause 119, which will mean that the Secretary of State

“must consult the public before making the first regulations under this section.”

This is absolutely the right approach, in my opinion. Consultation will be fundamental, and we need time to review the data and make sure that we are doing this right.

I have a certain amount of sympathy with the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell). There are strong commonalities between the Government’s new clause 119 and new clause 107, and I know, having run a local authority, that we must allow councils the freedom to do what is best for their own area. Believe me, a one-size-fits-all approach will not work. To avoid over-legislating, it will be essential that we get this right before applying the standardised registration scheme to the to-do list of local authorities, primarily because not all local authorities need a registration scheme; for those where a scheme is necessary, it must differ according to regional trends in short-term letting. Westminster will be different from York, and requirements in York will be different from those in Cumbria and coastal communities.

I take this opportunity to thank the Minister, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), who has really listened and got this argument. I do ask, though, that we look at announcing a timescale for the first regulations to be brought forward, to allow local authorities to start planning now for the registration if it is coming later this year. I am delighted that the Department has accepted our arguments and has brought in new clause 119.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 17th October 2023 Commons Chamber

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

I begin by adding my congratulations, in her temporary absence from the Chamber, to the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Sarah Dyke) on her maiden speech, which strongly impressed the House with her environmental commitment and credentials and which included generous tributes to some of her predecessors—not least to David Heath, whom many of us remember with affection and respect, and also to the late Mavis Tate, who may not be so well known to hon. Members of the House. She was a Conservative Member of Parliament during the war years, and indeed before the war. Unfortunately, she was a member of the team of 10 parliamentarians who went to visit the Buchenwald concentration camp, and what she saw there so undermined her mental health that she took her own life two years later in 1947. It is sad to reflect that, nearly 80 years later, comparable atrocities are still being carried out, for not dissimilar reasons, in parts of the middle east.

As a leaseholder myself, I would like to associate myself with the comments of the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), on the vulnerability of leaseholders to abuse of power by freeholders. That is something on which he has campaigned most effectively for a number of years. I also share the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) about building work that is allowed to proceed in the face of accurate predictions of future flooding. I know of more than one case of that happening in my own constituency.

My primary reason for making a brief contribution to the debate is to flag up the concern that I referred to earlier about the decision of the Government not to accept Lords amendment 13. I am to a degree reassured by what I heard from the Front Bench, which was reiterated quite effectively by my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) a few moments ago—namely, the assurances that district councils will in fact be able to make a contribution when decisions are made that directly affect them. Yet if there is an opportunity for further elaboration on that, I would like to hear it. I have probably heard enough to prevent me from rebelling against the Government, but whether I feel I can go all the way and vote against what the New Forest District Council chairman Jill Cleary, a Conservative chairman of a Conservative District Council, feels is so important is another matter.

For the record, this is what those concerns amount to. Lords amendment 13 states that, for combined county authorities:

“A Minister of the Crown may by regulations establish a process for non-constituent members to become full members.”

The district council feels this is a vital addition to the Bill, otherwise power will steal away from communities and be concentrated at county level without sufficient active district involvement. Indeed, the district council points to a survey of people in shire areas earlier this year, which shows high levels of trust in and satisfaction with district councils—higher levels than for other parts of local and national Government.

I conclude by quoting directly from Jill Cleary’s letter:

“District councils hold levers which are indispensable in creating jobs, improving economic opportunity, addressing skills shortages, tackling inequalities and reviving local pride—precisely the outcomes at the heart of levelling up agenda that the Bill seeks to reinforce. District councils are the housing and planning authorities in two-tier areas. We drive economic development in our places. We have strong links to local businesses, big and small, and a track record of attracting inward investment. It simply makes no sense that districts should be excluded from these new devolution deals.”

I appeal to the Minister, once again, to make it clear both to this House and to my concerned and esteemed local district council that it will not be sidelined or excluded by the Government’s refusal to accept Lords amendment 13.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call Peter Aldous to make the last Back-Bench contribution, so anybody who has contributed to the debate should start making their way to the Chamber. We are expecting a large number of votes.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

I will speak to three amendments, to highlight some concerns about why the Government are opposing changes made in the other place that, at face value, appear to have some merit, and to seek further clarification as to what they are doing to address those concerns.

A number of my hon. and right hon. Friends have mentioned Lords amendment 22, which relates to local authorities holding virtual meetings. I am a vice-president of the Suffolk Association of Local Councils, and the feedback I have received from all tiers of local government in Suffolk is that they support the Lords amendment, which the Government oppose. I acknowledge the Government’s view that a core principle of local democracy is that citizens should be able to attend local council meetings to interact in person with their local representatives. However, instead of an absolute bar on virtual attendance, I would suggest that allowing local discretion, pursuing a common-sense approach, is more appropriate for the following reasons.

First, 90% to 95% of councils at all levels, based on their own individual experiences, support such an approach, which is endorsed by the Local Government Association, the National Association of Local Councils and the Society of Local Council Clerks.

Secondly, many town and parish councils have difficulties in retaining a full slate of councillors. They regularly have to co-opt new members, and contested elections are invariably the exception rather than the rule. Allowing some local discretion with regard to the holding of council meetings would remove barriers to becoming a councillor for such groups as the disabled, parents, carers and full-time workers. These groups all have a great deal to contribute to their local communities, but many of them are put off by the straitjacket of being expected to attend all council meetings in person.