Tim Loughton
Main Page: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Mr Foster
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to say that we need to increase the availability of privately rented accommodation and that is why the Government have introduced £1 billion of funding through various schemes to provide support for that. I suspect that further announcements will be made in a relatively short time.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
15. What assessment he has made of the results of the neighbourhood planning referendums to date.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
16. What assessment he has made of the results of the neighbourhood planning referendums to date.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Nick Boles)
In all three referendums, residents have voted overwhelmingly in support of neighbourhood plans. More than 90% of voters said yes in Eden and Exeter St James and 76% in Thame.
Tim Loughton
I welcome the Government’s use of referendums in neighbourhood plans, which contrasts with the heavy-handed, top-down regional planning strategies of the last Government. Will the Minister confirm that my constituents in Adur, who face excessive house building on our diminishing green spaces—including, often, on floodplains between the downs and the sea—will be able to influence our draft local plan through the use of referendums, and that the planning inspector will be sympathetic to this manifestation of the localism promoted by the Government?
Nick Boles
I am delighted to be able to reassure my hon. Friend that a plan cannot be found sound unless it has undergone a great deal of consultation by local people; an inspector will expect that to have happened before they examine the plan.