English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (First sitting)

Vikki Slade Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Before we start hearing from the witnesses, do any Members wish to make any declaration of interest in connection with the Bill?

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I am a member of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council.

[Manuela Perteghella (Stratford-on-Avon) (LD)]

I declare that I used to be a parish councillor and, until March, a district councillor for Stratford-on-Avon.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Elsie Blundell (Heywood and Middleton North) (Lab)]

My husband is a sitting councillor on Rochdale borough council.

[Vikki Slade]

Apologies for having a second go, but my husband is also a sitting councillor and I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

In case we do not get to it this afternoon, Donna Jones, one of the witnesses, is a personal friend of mine.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maya Ellis]

Q You mentioned how important town and parish councils are, and suggested that you would ideally like to see more parish councils. My question is on the neighbourhood governance proposals in the Bill. What do you make of them? What should they learn from the current structures of the town and parish councils? Based on your earlier comment, do you think that we should not have them, but should be looking at extending parish and town councils?

Justin Griggs: One of the ambitions that the Government set out in the White Paper and the Bill is to simplify local government structures and make them much more consistent. In 92% of England, if you leave your house, the first place where decisions are taken for you is in the stewardship of your park and open spaces, and in the supporting local organisations. You would not have that in many parts of England under local government reorganisation.

Those structures should be set up, and it is very much in keeping with other phases of reorganisation. Cornwall, Shropshire and Northumberland are fully parished. It would very much go with the grain and good practice of what has happened previously. It is really helpful—credit to Sam and many of his members—that many district councils are conducting community governance reviews to take a look at neighbourhood and community governance in their areas, where there is interest and appetite to set up new councils, so that they have a structure and a voice for taking action.

On the ingredients of how neighbourhoods can work, it is really helpful that the Government have set out that they see neighbourhood governance and models such as neighbourhood area committees as not undermining parish and town councils, but recognising their role and how they should be hardwired into representation on those committees. That goes to the heart of how we need to get all tiers of local government—strategic authorities, unitary authorities and parish councils—working collectively to benefit their residents.

Sam Chapman-Allen: It is important that the Secretary of State and Whitehall do not dictate what those local government and neighbourhood arrangements look like. It is for local places, local residents and local councillors—whether town, parish, district, unitary or county councillors—to decide what those types of neighbourhood models look like, bringing everyone together from the voluntary sector to the public sector, and the private sector if required, to deal with the challenges in that place-based locality.

[Vikki Slade]

Q In more urban areas, particularly those that have districts and do not have town or parish councils—I represent an area that did not have a neighbourhood review and does not have them—there is real potential for losing the civic and cultural identity of a place. Can you talk to what you think needs to change in who is the local face for a town or community?

Sam Chapman-Allen: I come back to my previous response: it is for local places to decide. Everywhere will look different. Casting ourselves back to where we are in Norfolk, we have the fantastic cathedral city of Norwich and the two massive coastal ports of Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn. They are working out whether they need to establish a town or parish council, or whether the new unitary council can pick up that type of role—what is appropriate for them.

That civic place base is really important, with all the history and regalia that goes with it, but the most important bit is how those residents identify and interact with their local councillors and their local town hall. It is not for me, as chair of the District Councils Network, to tell them; I do not believe it is for Whitehall Departments either. It is for those local places to work out. That is what makes this Bill so special. It is for everybody in local communities to derive that. That is why it is important that local communities get to decide the structures, the size and scale, and the neighbourhood arrangements.

[Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)]

Q This is a question for Councillor Chapman-Allen about the balance of powers between councils and strategic authorities in the licensing space. A number of our district and unitary councils, including Peterborough and Huntingdonshire, in the area I represent are grappling with problems of taxi licensing, where taxis are potentially registering in nearby authorities with laxer regimes to avoid standards—

--- Later in debate ---

[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)]

Q A quick question to Councillor Hicks. In your role as chair of the County Council Network, have you had any discussions with or representations from Konsel Kernow, Cornwall Council? If you have, what is the nature of those discussions in relation to mayoral combined authorities?

Matthew Hicks: I have only been in post a week, so I cannot give you an answer as to whether those discussions have taken place in the past. Certainly I know we have looked at the Cornwall business case and Cornwall has always been well represented and a strong voice at the CCN, putting its case very strongly, and I am sure that will continue in the future. However, I cannot answer that question today.

[Vikki Slade]

Q This is a big question, but I know you need to give a quick answer. I think everyone is agreed, or most of us are agreed, that local government needs to reform urgently. Is this it? What is not in the Bill that should have been if we are going to do this properly? There is still an opportunity for us to do that.

Bev Craig: As we touched on earlier, sometimes a conflation of resource and organisation. It is important to draw the distinction that we are not here today to put forward the LGA’s position around the resourcing component, but it is important that we still see that outside the Bill. From an LGA perspective, we would be looking for more clarity on competencies as people move into strategic authorities, and really important is thought around what capacity and support is given to councils as they move through their transition. There are other things that we will continue to push for—for example, thinking about the role of civic and cultural competencies in strategic authorities and how they play into place. Fundamentally, in the Bill we want recognition that local authorities play a key role in delivering all of this, and without collaboration there will not be success.

Kevin Bentley: If I can leave you with one word, it is implementation. Although it does not feel like it, drawing lines on a map and putting the evidence forward is the easy part. Doing it is something very different. We learn from the experience of others and we look at others. This round of devolution is very different from what has happened before. We are creating new large authorities and devolving and disaggregating services upward to those authorities, so we must resource implementation properly. I would like to see a much firmer line on resourcing—not telling us how to do it, because I think we know locally how to do it, but making sure there is resourcing for us to do it. We have to remember that while we are doing that, with shadow elections for us in 2027, we still have to deliver the day job. That is about people and certainly in upper tier authorities, it is about some vulnerable people.

My only concern throughout all of this, and I am and always have been a great devolutionist, is that we do something or miss something and somebody falls through a crack and is left behind. None of us must allow that to happen. I know we will not and we will work very hard, but we need the proper resourcing to make that happen. This is fundamental change and is very unlikely to happen again for the next 50, 60 or even more years in the future. We have to get it right. Our successors will not thank us if we do not.

[The Chair]

I am afraid that brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions to this panel. On behalf of the Committee, I thank our witnesses.

Examination of Witnesses

Catriona Riddell and Ion Fletcher gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We will now hear evidence from Nick Plumb, policy director at Power to Change, and Robbie Whittaker, a member of the Football Supporters’ Association national council. This panel, and our morning sitting, will finish no later than 11.44 am.

[Vikki Slade]

Q Welcome to the Committee. Communities will be able to nominate assets of community value that are of economic value. Nick, that is particularly relevant for the community businesses that you support. Can you say a little about how communities could use the new power, and whether there are resources that need to come with that power?

Nick Plumb: At Power to Change, we think that the Bill’s provisions on community right to buy are a positive step forward. Power to Change has been calling for this for several years. To illustrate why the right is so needed, the key piece of data on the current regime on assets of community value and the community right to bid is that of every 1,000 assets that are listed as assets of community value, only 15 end up in community hands. The expansion of the definition of assets of community value to include economic as well as social benefit is a positive step, as is the introduction of a community right to buy as opposed to a community right to bid.

Some of the questions lie in the implementation. We think that there are potential challenges with this new right if you are asking councils to maintain a broader list of assets of community value and trying to get the new right to live up to the expectations that communities are rightly bringing forward. One thing that Power to Change has been calling for since the end of the community ownership fund is continued community ownership funding to support groups, particularly at the early stage at which groups might have a great idea for an asset but are not quite sure how to take it forward. A combination of revenue and capital funding is really important.

One of the lessons of the community ownership fund is that communities have a real ability to raise funds themselves. One of the great stories of the fund was that Government money leveraged lots of other investment, whether that was through private loans or by community share raising, where groups go out to the community to raise money from local members. Any future funding model for community ownership to sit alongside the community right to buy could be quite mixed. It could involve grant, loan and, importantly, revenue funding support and training. I know that there is mention of that in the Bill, and I am pleased to see that.

There is one final point to add, on the economic contribution of community-owned assets. Power to Change recently did some work with the 11,000 community businesses across England and found that they contribute roughly £1.5 billion in direct gross value added to the economy, which is equivalent to the solar sector, so they are important economic actors. Importantly, the economic contribution of community-owned assets sticks locally: we found that roughly 56p in every £1 circulates in the local economy, due to local supply chains, compared with roughly 40p for large private businesses. With the agenda around local growth, I see a successfully implemented community right to buy as a key driver of local growth outcomes.

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

Q Thank you for setting out how we are building on the community right to bid and the additional powers that are baked in to the legislation that will generally give communities the power to take over assets. One of the things that we have done a huge amount of work on over the past decade and a bit is building the capacity of our community organisations to be in the position to do this. I am interested in your take on the relationship with the neighbourhood governance powers in the Bill and the extent to which you think that this is an opportunity to build the capacity of some of our community organisations both to take over ownership but, critically, to have voice and power to change their places.

Nick Plumb: I want to make a couple of points. It was a really interesting conversation this morning on neighbourhood governance from colleagues from parish councils and local government. Power to Change is a member of the We’re Right Here campaign, which has been campaigning for community power legislation such as some of the measures in this Bill. We are keen that the neighbourhood governance measures that are introduced through the Bill allow for local variation and for a whole range of different organisations that exist at a neighbourhood level to be a part of that neighbourhood governance arrangement. We think that one of the risks with the area committee model is that it is a prescriptive top-down model that says, “This is the way to do things,” rather than saying, “What exists already in a neighbourhood, and how do we build on that?”

One of the ideas that Power to Change has been working on and testing in place is a community covenant. We have been testing that so far in Market Drayton in Shropshire through a partnership of 20 local organisations—everyone from the local authority to community organisations to representatives from town and parish councils—on the idea of a family and neighbourhood hub. So far, the results from that work are really positive. There was some initial scepticism about a new way of working, but one of the council officers has fed back that the new approach is a real gift that has helped them to move much further and faster with their communities than they would have done if they were just doing things from the council down.

One of the calls from us through this legislation is to try not to be too prescriptive with neighbourhood governance but lean into a model that puts people on an equal footing and gives people an equal seat at the table. I will not spend too long on this, but my other point is that it is great that we have a piece of legislation with “community empowerment” in its title, and I think that community right to buy and neighbourhood governance, if done right, go some way. Power to Change and the We’re Right Here campaign would like to see community right to buy as one of several community rights. We have been calling for a community right to shape public services, which would entail involving the people who receive services from the state in the design, delivery and development of public services. That would build on provisions in the Localism Act, such as the right to challenge, and it would make that a much more expansive right.

We would also like to see a community right to control investment, which would involve certain bits of investment from central Government sitting at that neighbourhood level. Both of those rights really lean into some of the Government’s existing agenda. The plan for neighbourhoods is a real example of that. There are some questions still to be answered on what that looks like, but it could involve trusting neighbourhoods to take hold of money and think, “How do we improve our lot together?”

The right to shape public services is very in line with some of the test, learn and grow work that is happening in the Cabinet Office. We would see the community empowerment element of the Bill really living up to its name if it was the beginning of a set of community rights rather than the community right to buy tick and done.