Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Second sitting)

Sarah Atherton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Final question from Sarah Atherton. We are running close to time, so can your question be quick, Sarah?

[Sarah Atherton (Wrexham) (Con)]

Q Can I pick up on community involvement again and the need for ownership and the sense that a community belongs to a project? Perhaps Sacha and Rich could give their opinions on the street votes.

Rich Bell: We welcome the spirit of street votes. They seem like a very sensible step forward to allow people to exercise a bit of agency at the neighbourhood level. We do not think they are anything near equal to the challenge that is before us. To emphasise the scale of the challenge we face, last year Demos asked people whether they would prefer to have more of a say over how money is spent in their area or rather have more money: people were twice as likely to say that they would prefer more say and less money than that they would prefer less say and more money. That speaks to how stark the situation has become.

There are various measures that we think could be taken to strengthen the ability of communities to exercise control over planning in their local areas. One that we would strongly recommend that the Committee considers is building into the Bill a community right to buy like that which is currently in law in Scotland. We would see that as a very sensible progression of the current measures.

[Sarah Atherton]

Sacha, do you have any comments?

Sacha Bedding: No, that’s fine.

[Sarah Atherton]

Q Do you have any suggestions, like the community right to buy?

Sacha Bedding: The strengthening of the Localism Act would be hugely helpful, as would longer timeframes for us to get our act together—if you give us six months and a developer comes in and already has money in the bank, the developer is always going to win. It is about levelling up the opportunity to take control of assets, because if you control the assets, you are halfway there. There are other things that can be done. For instance, give us 12 months rather than six months—that type of simple approach. Level the field between local communities—certainly in our left-behind places—to give them longer to get together, because it will take longer. Be patient with them and help them build their capacity to do this, because there is an overwhelming desire for it. When you talk about taking back control and levelling up, that resonates, because they have so little control.

[The Chair]

Order. I am sorry, but we have run out of time for questions to this panel. On behalf of the Committee, I thank the witnesses for their evidence.

Examination of Witnesses

Councillor James Jamieson, Councillor Tom Oliver and Councillor Sam Chapman-Allen gave evidence.