Sustainable Communities

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship Mr Weir. I congratulate the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) on securing this important debate and on the comprehensive nature of his introduction, which has led to an interesting exchange. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), who demonstrated the importance of investing in truly local democracy if we are to tackle acute social problems that include substandard housing or rogue landlords.

I thought that the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) was going to treat us to a lecture on sustainable farming. That would have been very interesting, although apparently it will have to wait for another day. Instead, we heard about the importance of decentralisation.

The hon. Members for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), for Southport (John Pugh) and for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) spoke about the need actively to enable communities to regenerate and be sustainable, including by regenerating high streets. I want to come to some of those points myself.

For a community to be sustainable, it must have access to facilities such as schools, jobs, shops and green spaces, and, increasingly, access to a low-carbon future. Clearly, however, no two communities are the same. Each faces different problems and has different priorities and circumstances. That is why communities themselves are most often best placed to identify the problems that they face and to work with others to find solutions. I believe that the Government know that. They have talked loudly and frequently about their desire to give more power to local people. In fact, the Prime Minister went so far as to say:

“Our future depends on putting more political responsibility in the hands of local people.”

The Minister will know that the Labour Government legislated for exactly that, with cross-party support, through the Sustainable Communities Act 2007, which put greater power in the hands of local communities to encourage economic, social and environmental well-being in their areas. I, too, pay tribute to the many midwives that the Act had. I will not repeat all the names given by the hon. Member for St Ives, but I want to add one—that of my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Martin Caton), who did a lot of work on the regulations.

We then amended and strengthened the Act in 2010, so it is incredibly disappointing that progress on the Act has stalled, as the regulations that would allow the amended version to be implemented have not, until today, been forthcoming. It would be churlish not to thank the Minister for informing us that the regulations are—finally—on their way, but he will know that there has been growing anger and frustration at the Government’s failure to publish them. There are many written parliamentary question responses, letters and e-mails, dating from before November, promising time and again that the regulations would be published soon, very shortly or within weeks, but I will take him at his word and expect them very soon indeed.

Perhaps the Minister would like to take some time to explain to us why there has been the extraordinary delay in producing the regulations. After all, the consultation finished more than a year ago. Given the huge amount of work that has gone into producing other measures, such as the Localism Act 2011, that apparently are aimed at broadly the same goal, it is hard to understand why the regulations to support the 2007 Act could not have been forthcoming much sooner.

Many people and organisations have been frustrated by the delay. I have been contacted by organisations such as the Campaign for Real Ale, the Public and Commercial Services Union and Local Works and by a number of constituents. They want to know why, if the Government are so pro-localism, they have been so slow to move forward with the Act and put power into the hands of local communities. I therefore look forward to hearing the reasons for that extraordinary delay.

Labour supported the Sustainable Communities Bill in 2007 because it looked set to introduce bottom-up decision making and inspire more people to become involved in shaping the policies that affect them. We want to see that put into operation. Key to the 2007 Act was the compulsion for the relevant local authority and the Secretary of State to try to reach agreement on local people’s proposals. That, Local Works says, is what gives the Act teeth. Without a meaningful definition of reaching agreement, the Act risks becoming a glorified consultation process that might only compound frustration in some communities. Will the Minister give an assurance that, when published, the regulations will include the definition of reaching agreement given by my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears)—a dialogue in which the final decision is to be taken together?

Will the Minister also give assurances that he will urgently consult on new regulations that will, in line with his speech to the House in March 2011, allow town and parish councils to submit suggestions and proposals under the Act? Along with publishing the regulations, will the Minister write a memorandum of understanding between the Secretary of State and the selector to set a time limit on how long it takes for proposals to be dealt with and to ensure that the selection process is as transparent as possible? I should like to know whether the Minister plans to include Local Works as part of the selector.

Surely, the 2007 Act is one of the best ways to encourage sustainable communities. Does the Minister agree? Beyond that important Act, he and his colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government have been busy introducing a raft of other measures that I am sure he hoped would give power to local people, but I have a few concerns.

The national planning policy framework was touted as a way of engaging communities in planning and ensuring that they had a positive say on development in their area. Essential to that are neighbourhood planning forums and the plans that they produce, but a huge number of communities are likely to face significant problems in getting those groups off the ground. The Government have given funding of £20,000 to front-runner forums. I welcome that, but am very concerned about what will happen in the future, especially as we know that the Department itself has estimated that the plans could cost up to £63,000. I am concerned that that runs the risk of affluent communities being able to engage positively in the planning process, while disadvantaged communities cannot.

The 2011 Act is designed to give local communities the power to bid for services or assets, but again it is not clear how they will achieve that or where the resources to enable them to do so will come from. I am worried that the Government are sometimes confusing giving responsibility to communities with devolving power to them. In addition, new duties are being placed on local authorities, while many are seeing their resources from central Government cut massively.

Another key part of sustainability is, of course, the environment. We are in the process of moving to a low-carbon economy, but we will achieve that goal only if all communities have access to renewable and low-carbon energy. This might be outside the Minister’s remit, but it would be useful to hear something about how he thinks all communities will be able to gain access to renewable energy sources and within a reasonable time frame.

The last issue that I want to raise has been mentioned by other hon. Members—the need for regeneration of our high streets. Again, it is important that we welcome the money that has gone into the Portas pilots, but clearly it is not enough and it will not help all communities, including some of the most needy, to regenerate their high streets. Are the Government doing any more thinking on how to ensure that all communities can regenerate their high streets? Finally, how will the Minister ensure that all communities can take full advantage of the 2007 Act once the regulations are published?