Sustainable Communities

Annette Brooke Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

You will excuse me, Mr Weir, for not standing up. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George). I am not sure whether I should be congratulating him on securing the debate or the Minister on signing the regulations today. If I make it a tie, perhaps both will be kind to me. None the less, it is important that we are having this debate and that, at long last, the regulations are in motion. I hope that the date of their publication—before the summer recess—is firm, as further slippage would be unfortunate.

I reflect on the contribution made by my good friend Sue Doughty in 2002, and all the work that has been done since. Like many other hon. Members, I spent more Fridays in London than I might have chosen to do to get this important legislation through. The number of hon. Members who have been committed to the process is significant.

On the idea of community, we have heard three very impressive speeches today, and I concur with much of what has been said. I have to say that I would not want to force communities to have a mayor, or force anything else on them, but I take on board some of the interesting comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart).

I want to focus my remarks right down at community level. I am sure we all have our experiences from celebrating the jubilee such a short time ago. If ever there was absolute evidence of strong community feeling, we saw it then, whether we attended a street party and the community was along that particular street; whether we attended a party in a park, which attracted people living on several nearby roads; or whether a village or even a small town came together. As well as signing the regulations today, the Minister must be committed to sorting out the time limits as we go through the process. There are many stories about people becoming disenchanted, having put their ideas forward and then having to wait a year or more to see whether they will progress. We should make the most of the enormous impetus that has just been given to community and pulling together, and act now. At the many community events I attended, people were saying, “We should do this again next year.” There was a real feeling that we can move forward and do all sorts of things.

As this debate is about localism, I shall refer to my constituency, which is interesting in that it is diverse but does not have a big town centre: it is composed of small market towns, district shopping centres and villages. There are some interesting aspects: for example, one district shopping centre and its neighbourhood put in a bid for Mary Portas money. I do not know how many local district shopping centres entered the bidding process, but I thought it was an ambitious thing to do, given the number of bids that would be successful. In itself, the bidding process was useful in bringing together ideas from the local community. Some communities will not get their neighbourhood plans off the ground. I think there is a hierarchy of what people might do, which is where the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 comes in, because it may not be a formal neighbourhood plan that takes matters forward, but initiatives under that legislation.

In district shopping centres, there are of course the same issues of use. My local shopping centre has many takeaways. My community obviously enjoys having takeaways or there would not be so many, but they affect the sustainability of the rest of the shopping centre, as do betting shops and some other uses. I feel that we need the hierarchy. I know the Minister is looking at use classes, and I hope that he will tell us today how the Localism Act 2011, “town centre first” policies, aspects of the national planning policy framework and the neighbourhood plans will all pull together as we move forward with the 2007 Act.

I want to make a brief reference to parish councils, of which there are several in my constituency. I have received representations from some parishes, along the lines of, “Why aren’t we getting on with this?” or “Why isn’t it confirmed that we will be part of this process?” I hope that the Minister will answer firmly today. To give a small example—to contrast with the much bigger issue of broadband, which is important—one of my villages wanted to adopt a roundabout and attract sponsorship, so that the roundabout would be attractive. Five years later the villagers have abandoned the attempt, because the county council made it so difficult. It is incredible to me that they were unable to do something so simple—something that towns throughout the country do—but one obstacle after another was put in their way. I am sure that all hon. Members have many such examples.

Let us be truly visionary. Let us have the whole picture of how the 2011 Act will work and how everything will slot into it, and give communities their say and the power to do what they want to do. It might be something as small as adopting a roundabout or gaining the right to put up sign posts without county council interference, or it might involve the bigger issues of true sustainability, improving our quality of life and ensuring that the next generation has a good community to grow up in and develop further.