Rural Upper-tier Local Authorities

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd September 2026 Westminster Hall

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD) [R]]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for rural upper tier local authorities.

I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association, and I am extremely worried about the widening gap in opportunity, social mobility and economic growth between rural and urban areas. Rural areas are being held back and the futures of rural children are being limited by public services that are underfunded and overstretched, lamentably slow digital connectivity, the lack of public transport, and urban-centric perceptions based on misunderstandings about the nature of rural life.

The last local government finance settlement laid bare that neglect in financial terms. It was a stark admission from this Government that their plan is to strip funding from rural areas to improve services in urban ones. The Rural Services Network has calculated that urban councils will receive 32% more funding per head than rural councils next year. Meanwhile, rural residents pay on average 17% more council tax per head than urban residents, out of lower than average wages, to plug the gap, yet the cost of delivery means that they receive a poorer public service.

For Shropshire council, the funding situation is particularly grave, following 16 years of catastrophic management by Shropshire’s Conservatives. When the Lib Dem administration took over in May 2025, Shropshire was in the most difficult financial position of any council in England. The recent Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy report on the huge challenge in Shropshire reveals the details of the Conservatives’ poor management: unrealistic budgets and constant overspends that burned through all the remaining reserves; an obsession with unaffordable vanity projects, such as the purchase of Shrewsbury’s shopping centres and millions spent on an unaffordable road; a sloppy workforce restructure in 2024-25, which drove out the talented managers needed to transform the financial situation; and the “legacy impact” of five years of consecutive council tax freezes. All that was left as a parting gift for the new administration to pick up. The report describes the direction of the council under its recently appointed new chief executive and four-to-five-year improvement plan as a “positive step”, and a peer review by the LGA praised the “significant strides” made so far, but the financial position remains perilous and the challenge to restructure the council is huge.

Eighty per cent of Shropshire council’s budget is spent on social care, an issue on which the Liberal Democrats have long called for urgent action. The cost of delivering social care in a rural area with the demographics of North Shropshire, where 25% of the population is aged over 65, means that the pressure is only set to rise. Adult social care spending has already been rising by about 5.8% a year, more than could have been generated by council tax increases, because people are living longer, needs are becoming more complex, and workforce costs are rising, with care providers consequently charging more.

Demand for education, health and care plans has risen even faster. Shropshire now has 3,016 active EHCPs, a 21% increase in one year compared with national growth of 11%. The number of school-aged children with EHCPs has increased by 78% since before the pandemic. That puts more pressure on specialist education, school transport and family support. Last year, the council put up council tax by 8.99%. Although that brought in a massive £21 million a year, it covered only about a third of the extra cost from demand and inflation alone.

Amid that financial turmoil, the Government have cut funding per head in Shropshire. It is projected to fall well below 90% of 2024 funding by 2028, while the national average is set to rise to around 118%. The exceptional financial support provided to balance the books bears interest and must be paid back; it worsens prospects for the future, and for a considerable time. Under the Government’s new devolution plans, there is a risk that the gap between mayoral and non-mayoral authorities could increase further.

During the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday, I asked him about the importance of power and resourcing being made available to all authorities, not just those that have formed a combined authority or have a mayor. His answer was in some ways encouraging, but in other ways it bothered me. He said that when Shropshire council could

“stand on its own two feet”—[Official Report, 1 September 2026; Vol. 790, c. 49.]

it would be able to access devolution, but the Government’s own three-year financial settlement is forcing austerity on rural areas, making the achievement of self-sufficiency far less likely.

[Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)]

I am sure that the issues in Shropshire that the hon. Lady mentions are the same as those that we in Cornwall have experienced. Does she agree that the move to a mayoral share of income tax is not a detriment to non-mayoral areas like ours but an opportunity to reset the model? We have seen integrated settlements and money being thrown at mayoral regions, but this is an opportunity to turn the taps off for those regions and turn them back on for areas like ours that have not proceeded with a mayor.

[Helen Morgan]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I would need to see the detail of that proposal and what it would mean. Shropshire is already a unitary authority and is essentially at the bottom of the list for a devolution plan, so that seems too far off. There seems to be no prospect of stabilising the financial situation until there is a firm plan to ensure that the powers needed to turn the area around, and the resources to go with them, are firmly in place. We urgently need clarity on that.

The hardship and austerity in rural areas has come about largely as a result of the removal of remoteness as a factor when calculating what it costs for a rural authority to deliver services across a vast area. The County Councils Network estimates that that has removed £300 million from its members’ budgets—an amount that the Government expect to be made up by increased council tax.

Shropshire council has been squeezed at both ends—first by years of Conservative maladministration, and then by Labour cutting its funding, despite the obvious need —and it is far from alone. Rather than tackling the problem head on, the Government have underfunded rural councils, which has perpetuated rural deprivation. That is particularly acute where people lack access to services, and it is hidden, unlike urban deprivation.

While door-knocking in my constituency, I met a delightful elderly gentleman living in a small cottage, and I was astonished to also meet his grandson, who was apparently living in his shed in the garden because he was unable to find anywhere else to live. Such cases go unnoticed in homelessness statistics, because families and communities find their own solutions to wrap around those individuals, but no one thinks a shed is appropriate accommodation for that young man. He should not have been allowed to fall through the net.

A lack of funds for local transport perpetuates isolation and leads to a vicious cycle, stunting economic growth and creating further challenges for the council’s provision of services such as social care. When members of the Casey commission came to Shropshire to talk about the challenges of delivering social care in a rural area, they were astonished by the notion that carers must have a car because there is no transport in the evening or on a Sunday.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister spoke of the importance of local transport and publicly provided services. We all agree with him, but Shropshire’s bus allocation has been cut despite the fact that it has lost more bus miles than anywhere else. Revenue funding is due to drop £175,000 in 2027-28. The Secretary of State for Transport, in an answer to me about step-free access at Whitchurch station, implied that the funds will be spent where the people are, not where the need is. She said:

“When we are investing in the accessibility of stations in the future, we need to get maximum benefit for the travelling public.”—[Official Report, 16 July 2026; Vol. 789, c. 1059.]

Previously, that has meant that the funds go to the most densely populated areas, not to those where there are no real alternative forms of transport.

The patchy public transport network across North Shropshire means that it is almost impossible for most residents to manage without a car, and that brings further associated costs. Those who cannot access a car, whether they are young or old, become isolated and unable to access opportunities, education and services.

Similar patterns of deprivation are reinforced through Government funding for education in rural areas, even though they often already struggle with teacher recruitment and retention. Schools in North Shropshire received an average of £6,460 a head last year, compared with a national average of about £7,910, but outcomes at GCSE and key stage 4 are consistently lower than the national average, and indeed the west midlands average. How can the Government justify lower funding when the outcomes are already lower? Surely every child deserves the opportunities provided by a properly funded education.

That applies to capital spending in education too. One shocking example in my constituency is a primary school in one of the most rural parishes that still has outside toilets, in their original Victorian red-brick building. A lady told me during my summer tour this year that her granddaughter was too afraid to use the toilets because they are full of spiders and had an accident at school as a result. That is unacceptable. That is the kind of thing that people remember when they are 50 if it happened to them when they were seven at school.

Young people in rural areas are having their horizons limited as a direct result of Government policy. That needs to change, urgently. In what way are the Government tackling inequality if rural and coastal areas are persistently underfunded, despite their worse outcomes? My constituents rightly perceive an entirely broken system in which every year they pay more and receive less. That is obviously unfair and is opening the door wide to populists and extremists who exploit the situation with divisive messages to divide our community and simple but unworkable solutions.

The new Prime Minister has given us all hope by promising growth in every postcode. He will fail in rural areas if he does not address the obvious unfairness that Government policy combined with the pressures of ever-increasing demand for social care are delivering. Proper devolution will help rural councils tailor public services to the areas that they serve, but there must be acknowledgement of the need for a fair allocation of resources to go with those theoretical powers. I hope the Minister can provide details in his response.

--- Later in debate ---

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

Meur ras —it is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) on securing this important debate.

I want to focus on SEND and home-to-school transport. On SEND, Cornwall is the 11th lowest funded of 151 local authorities, receiving less than half the per pupil funding of Kensington and Chelsea. Over the last eight years, the number of our pupils with an EHCP has almost doubled, but the delays in issuing EHCPs are far longer than average. In Cornwall, two thirds of those waiting for an EHCP wait for more than 20 weeks, compared with about 50% in England, meaning more stress and uncertainty for Cornish children and their parents.

In a very large, long and remote coastal region, the additional costs of transport show up persistently in every aspect of Cornish life. Cornwall council’s expenditure on home-to-school transport has increased by nearly 300% over the past seven years—a far steeper rise than for our urban counterparts. When it comes to funding more broadly, being a coastal community with some of the UK’s finest beaches is actually a double-edged sword; in fact, it could be argued that we are damned by our natural beauty. Significant in-migration by wealthy English retirees not only places additional pressures on healthcare and our housing market but masks the true extent of deprivation in Treasury funding models.

In my constituency, the average weekly wages in Camborne, Redruth and Hayle are nearly £100 less than the national average, and child poverty is currently at 35%. We were very thankful that the costs of being remote and coastal were recognised in the local government funding settlement for adult social care, but the cost pressures for home-to-school transport were not reflected. I respectfully say to the Minister that a principle cannot be half applied.

[Helen Morgan]

The hon. Gentleman is making an important and fundamental point: everything costs more when it is spread out. For example, bin collections cost a huge amount more for unitary authorities. Home-to-school transport is not just for children with SEND but for children who cannot catch the bus to school because there is no bus. Everything costs a vastly significant amount more than when people just live down the road. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is really important that that is reflected in Government funding formulae, because it is crippling our councils?

[Perran Moon]

I do agree with the hon. Lady. I cannot believe that in the 21st century it is beyond the wit of man or woman to calculate the major costs that affect our rural and remote coastal areas compared with the costs for our urban counterparts. We are not trying to deprive the services available in urban areas; it is about raising the level of services for remote coastal and rural communities to the same standard.

That brings me back to my central point. Despite the rising costs and demands, Cornwall is being asked to do far more with far less, which is why we need a comprehensive, non-mayoral, Cornwall-only devolution deal that allows us to overcome some of the challenges of life in the Duchy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Barker. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) for securing this important debate.

Before moving to rural South Devon in 2007, I had spent all my life living in and around major cities: Edinburgh, Sheffield and then London. After nearly 20 years living in the rural south-west, I can honestly say that I had previously not understood rural life because I had not lived it. I have since come to realise that the rural-urban divide is possibly one of the deepest divides in our country and one that is too often overlooked, especially by Governments made up of city and urban MPs who simply do not understand the reality of rural communities and fail to see the deprivation that lurks behind the hedgerows.

Those communities are often forgotten when spending decisions are taken despite a set of circumstances that mean we desperately need the Government’s financial backing. Incomes are lower due to the older average age, jobs are often seasonal and low-waged, people in rural areas travel almost twice as far as those in urban areas, and there is often no public transport. Healthcare is a challenge because community services have been cut, hospitals are miles away and hospital transport has all but disappeared. High-speed internet is crucial when services are scarce, yet broadband connectivity lags far behind urban areas. Banks, pubs and post offices are closing, hollowing out communities and increasing rural isolation. As the hon. Members for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon), for St Austell and Newquay (Noah Law) and for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham)—all of them from Cornwall—have said, the high number of second homes, high house prices and low wages massively exacerbates the housing affordability crisis. In Devon, the full-time salary to house price ratio is 10.6:1—well above England’s average of 8.7:1.

Despite all that, funding is persistently driven into urban areas while rural communities are left behind. The previous Conservative Government forced councils to do more with less. Their policy to force local authorities to use their reserves to subsidise their revenue expenditure was deeply wrong and, as a result, six rural upper-tier local authorities are on the brink of issuing section 114 notices, which would effectively declare them bankrupt.

The current Government have committed to providing multi-year funding settlements for local authorities, which we welcome, but for rural communities the 2026-27 to 2028-29 settlement falls well short. The withdrawal of the rural services delivery grant was a huge blow to councils in Devon, costing about £14 million, and no rural councils benefited from the replacement funding or recovery grant.

The new formulas mean that local authorities in cities will have higher spending power than in previous years while rural shire districts will have less to spend. Under the local government finance settlement for this year, urban councils will receive 32% more per head in Government-funded spending than rural councils. Devon county council will receive £1,056 in core spending power per head compared to Hackney council’s £1,645 or Liverpool city council’s £1,598. It does not cost 50% more to provide services in Hackney or Liverpool than in Devon. In fact, I would argue it potentially costs less because of the rurality.

Furthermore, the Government’s 2026-29 local government finance settlement does not include any explicit support for rural upper-tier authorities. The new formula has included remoteness only as an uplift in the formula for adult social care. As my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (John Milne) said, a rural child is not easier to service than a rural adult. It is utterly shocking that the Government do not believe that remoteness is relevant to the delivery of any other service, such as school transport or waste collection.

It goes way beyond the additional time it takes to travel. Rural councils have several other considerations that urban councils simply do not have to contend with, including requiring more service centres due to the spread-out population and more professionals to cover visits across a huge rural area. They receive fewer responses to contract tenders, perhaps only getting one from the incumbent provider, which leads to a market with increased prices for services.

There are physical constraints such as needing smaller refuse vehicles, especially on the narrow lanes near where I live in Devon. Those vehicles have to return to base to be emptied more often, and rural areas also need multiple depots for equipment and vehicles. Thus, they need more equipment to service the streets and more drivers.

Pockets of deprivation, often hidden by prettiness, are particularly hard hit. Social mobility for young people living in deprived rural areas is one of the lowest in the country. None of this is considered in the new funding formula outside of adult social care. I urge the Minister to review that.

Quite simply, the new system of allocation does not recognise that the sparse and isolated nature of rural areas drives higher costs for the delivery of essential services, creates challenges in recruitment of staff for key services and requires local authorities to provide a greater public subsidy for the provision of public transport. This is very much in keeping with a Labour Government that have persistently failed to acknowledge that every service is harder to deliver across rural areas.

Let me use Devon to illustrate why this service delivery is so tough. Rural Devon is a drive of over 100 miles from north to south. It would take me 10 hours to walk across just my constituency, which is a fraction of the county, and nowhere near the biggest. I am not sure how Manchesterism will translate to rural areas, but we cannot apply the same principles to a city of 3 million people and villages with just 10 houses and expect to see the same results.

The trajectory for rural councils over the next three years is deeply concerning. The very limited increase in Government funding will require service reductions or significant increases in council tax or business rate income to maintain core spending power. As has been said, rural residents will pay 17% more in council tax per head compared to urban residents this year, yet Government funding will be directed towards urban authorities.

The Government are relying on a regressive council tax to fund services in rural areas that it was never meant to. As a result of this funding settlement, by 2028-29 urban councils will have seen a 20% increase in Government-funded spending power, compared to only 2% for rural councils. How can that be fair? These are not just numbers on a spreadsheet; we are talking about people’s lives. From the growing number of children with SEND who cannot access the support they need to the closing of vital community spaces like libraries and leisure centres, this lack of funding has a real impact on people.

We are concerned by the Government’s decision to allocate additional funding within the local government finance settlement on a need and demand basis. It will jeopardise the sustainability of rural local councils. The Liberal Democrats oppose the three-year local government finance settlement, which does not go far enough in providing a truly fair funding settlement to all local authorities across the board. We urge the Government to provide rural councils with a funding settlement that reflects the true impact of rurality and sparsity of the areas they serve through the application of the fair funding formula.

The ability to provide services to people in my constituency and across rural Devon will only be made worse by the proposal for four unitary authorities recently chosen by the Government for the local government reorganisation in Devon. I urge the Minister to bear with me on this. That proposal from Labour-run Plymouth and Exeter will see those two cities massively expanded, to the great delight of their Labour MPs, and a new urban growth area based around Torbay, leaving a fourth authority—the bits that were left behind when the urban areas were gouged out—stretching 70 miles from Ilfracombe in the north to Salcombe in the south, but 100 miles by road. That authority will have to maintain a road network not dissimilar to the whole of Luxembourg’s with no major town to offer opportunities for growth and regeneration and the most deprived area of Devon to support.

[Helen Morgan]

The point of combined authorities is to derive economies of scale from placing urban and rural areas together. Some of those economies of scale can be driven by the density in the urban area. Does my hon. Friend agree that it makes no sense to split up the urban and rural areas in the way she describes?

[Caroline Voaden]

I absolutely agree. It makes no sense to any of us in Devon. I have spent the entire summer listening to constituents who are deeply distressed about what has happened, which leaves them in a rump rural local authority with no option for economic growth or regeneration.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Morgan]

I thank all hon. Members who have come along and made excellent speeches—particularly team south-west, who have turned out in force. They all highlighted the difficulties in delivering services in sparsely populated areas with vast distances to travel. They spoke about the impact on highways funding, the importance of generating economic growth, the cost of delivering SEND, and the proxy creation of district councils through the re-empowering of town and parish councils to deliver things that the unitary council can no longer afford to deliver because they are not a statutory requirement. They were really good speeches.

I am very disappointed that the Minister wound up with a speech that kind of told us that everything is actually fine. On the day that the local government finance settlement was announced, I sat on the Opposition Benches, along with all my colleagues, without a clue about what my local authority had been awarded because it was not findable, we had not been told and it could not be googled, yet everyone on the Labour Benches appeared to know what their settlement was and congratulated the Minister on its delivery. That is symptomatic of a pattern of this Government. They tell rural areas, “Everything is fine. It looks pretty. Go away and stop worrying, and actually, we are going to focus on urban areas.” We all recognise that urban areas need investment and are not thriving as they should be—this is not about pitting one area against another—but rural areas need fair funding and devolution. In a council that has stripped back every single employee that it can, there is no capacity to generate economic growth or transform the underlying financial structure of the council, because nobody has the time in the day to do it. They need that devolution funding to rethink how they deliver services in a sustainable way for the future. I hope the Minister will take those points on board.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Government support for rural upper tier local authorities.

Park Home Owners

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Mr Joshua Reynolds (Maidenhead) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. I thank the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for securing the debate. We have discussed these issues multiple times on the all-party parliamentary group on park homes, of which he is also a member.

Park home residents are often the forgotten home owners in our housing system. In this place we rightly discuss leaseholders, renters and first-time buyers, but we almost never talk about the 160,000 people who own park homes in England, four in five of whom are over 65. The quiet injustice that they have faced for many years is overwhelming. These people are overwhelmingly older residents, and most of the time are on fixed incomes. They choose this way of life, in park homes, because it is settled, affordable and within reach, when so much of the rest of the housing market is not. They pay their site fees and maintenance charges, and keep their homes in good order, often for decades.

The hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume) talked about the issues with the agreements— eight months or 12 months—when people buy their homes. One reason for those issues is that when people buy their park homes, they are often told, “Don’t worry about conveyancing or solicitors. You don’t need that. It’s not important.” They would never have been told that if they bought another property, but that is okay when it comes to park homes. That is where quite a lot of the issues, including those faced by the hon. Lady’s constituent, come from.

When people come to sell their park home, the law steps in and takes 10% of the sale price—not the gain or profit, but the price. That is handed straight over to the site owner. That is not for services rendered at the point of sale, for an obligation that has been discharged, or for anything that we as Members can quantify and put our fingers on—or that the industry itself can explain—but just because they are selling their park home. For most park home owners, selling is not a choice, but a last resort: they are downsizing and moving closer to relatives, or, in quite a lot of cases, they are going to pay for care costs that age has made unavoidable.

At the precise moment when every single penny matters most, the system reaches into their pockets and takes a 10% slice. On a £300,000 park home, that is £30,000, but many park homes in my Maidenhead constituency go for upwards of £500,000, £550,000 or £600,000. That is a massive amount of money. It could pay for a lot of years of social care, but it is being taken out of the system—being paid for now by our local authorities—because of that 10%. That can determine whether someone dies in dignity or experiences difficulty at a time that should be secure.

I have at various times called the 10% commission unfair and illogical, and I stand by that. It singles out one group of home owners for a deduction. No leaseholder, freeholder or shared owner would ever tolerate that.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

I agree with my hon. Friend’s point about sales commission charges. Given that we had a consultation into park home sales commission charges in 2022, which concluded that there was no good justification for them, does he agree that what we now need from the Government is not another a consultation, but a fixed timeline so that we can understand when real action will be taken on behalf of our constituents in park homes?

[Mr Joshua Reynolds]

My hon. Friend is completely right. Park home residents have had consultation after consultation over many years. Site owners will respond to the current Government consultation, because they have lawyers to back them up and support them in putting in their thoughts, but the park home owners I have spoken to worry that there is no point in submitting responses to yet another consultation when, as they see it, nothing is going to happen. I worry that far fewer park home owners will respond to this consultation, and we will therefore end up with a one-sided consultation.

Local Government Finance

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed]

Let me return to my theme for a moment before I take any more interventions.

The right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) and colleagues across the House will remember that the Tories used to belittle local councillors as part-time volunteers and took away their pension rights to deter people from risking a career on the frontline of local government. Today, it falls to this Government to fix the foundations that the Tories smashed apart.

We are rebuilding local government so that councils can rebuild their communities. We are making good on our promise to introduce multi-year funding settlements so that councils can plan for the future with certainty. We are reconnecting funding with need so that we can take off the Tory shackles that have held back so many of our towns and communities for so long. We are ending wasteful bidding wars for funding, freeing councils to focus on filling in potholes, not forms. We are putting fairness back into a system that the Tories bragged about breaking. We reject the decline that ripped the heart out of towns and communities up and down this country. We choose change.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

Shropshire council is about to see a 10% cut in its core funding from central Government, having been terribly badly run by the Conservatives for the previous 16 years before the Lib Dem administration took over in May. The Government have given the council permission to put up its council tax by 9% without a referendum, but that does not even touch the sides of the cut in funding from central Government. How is Shropshire, which needs to receive exceptional financial support in this year, ever going to fill the ever-growing black hole unless the funding from Government reflects the costs of delivering services in rural areas?

[Steve Reed]

I believe the hon. Lady has had several meetings with my colleague the Minister for Local Government. It is right and very important that we should align funding with need; that is the only way to ensure that funding is fair across the whole country. That is what we promised to do in our manifesto, and that is what we are doing with this settlement.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

I am working closely with my Department for Work and Pensions colleagues, and we know that there are many problems with affordability in the private rented sector. Ministers have mentioned some of the actions we are taking today, but we will be working with the DWP to do more.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

Shropshire council had its funding cut in the local government finance settlement, despite needing exceptional financial support this year and a surge in demand for social care in the years to come that cannot be managed down by the council. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how to put Shropshire on a stable financial footing?

[Alison McGovern]

I have already met the hon. Lady and I would be very happy to meet her again.

Local Government Finance

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

I have to agree with my hon. Friend that it is not just the people of Bedford who are excited about Universal Studios; the excitement can be felt across the United Kingdom. Today’s settlement hopefully helps us on that journey, but I will happily meet him to discuss the impacts on Bedford and the wider area.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

I know the Minister is aware that Shropshire council ran out of road this year, having been caught in a perfect storm of 16 years of Conservative mismanagement of the council, surging demand for social care and the failure of the previous Government to recognise the reality of delivering services in a rural area. Can she reassure my constituents that she will not only help us to get through this difficult period with exceptional financial support, but work with me and the other Shropshire MPs to ensure that Shropshire council is put on a secure financial footing for the future?

[Alison McGovern]

I thank the hon. Member for meeting me recently to discuss that issue, which was really helpful. As I said in my statement, decisions about financial support will be taken in the usual way, and I will of course work with her and other Shropshire MPs to make sure that her area is on a journey towards sustainability.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

My hon. Friend highlights that, as many of us know, the reality of home ownership for so many leaseholders falls far short of the dream. We absolutely agree that we need to strengthen the regulation of managing agents, to drive up the standard of their service. We are looking again at Lord Best’s 2019 report on regulating the property agent sector, particularly in the light of the recommendations in the final Grenfell inquiry report. We have set out a number of specific proposals in the consultation that I referred to in my previous answer. Our preferred approach in implementing mandatory professional qualifications is for agents to belong to a designated body, but all final decisions will be taken in due course.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

As the Minister will be aware, some freeholders find themselves trapped in a leasehold-like situation: the wider estate that they live on is managed by a management company and not adopted by the local authority. They are fleeced in exactly the same way by exorbitant management charges, and there are often unadopted roads and poor sewerage. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how we can provide protections for freeholders who find themselves in that leasehold situation?

[Matthew Pennycook]

We remain committed to protecting residential freeholders on private and mixed-tenure housing estates from unfair charges of the type that the hon. Lady described. We will consult this year on implementing the 2024 Act’s new consumer protection provisions for the 1.75 million homes that are subject to those charges. We are committed to bringing those measures into force as quickly as possible.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Helen Morgan Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Vikki Slade]

A similar thing happened in Dorset. In fact, the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) voted against a merger in our area but failed, even under his own Government. I will come to the issue of proportional representation.

Strategic mayors have the potential to be our regional champions. The Liberal Democrats recognise the benefits that they have brought to many cities, including London and Manchester. However, the Bill fails to standardise their role or to put all regions on an equal footing. Some areas have been selected for early adoption and funding, while others—Kent, Medway and my own area of Wessex—are left behind with no timeline or support.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

It is unclear for some areas, including Shropshire, where they will end up being made to form a combined authority. Shropshire shares borders with Wales and Cheshire, which is in a different region, so there is no clear partner for it. I am concerned that Shropshire will end up being forced into a combined authority with an area that does not look like Shropshire or give any benefit to its residents. Does my hon. Friend agree that this needs to be better thought through?

[Vikki Slade]

I share my hon. Friend’s concern that some areas risk being left behind by this muddled approach. I ask the Secretary of State for assurances on how she will ensure that such areas do not fall further behind neighbours that are further along in the programme.

We Liberal Democrats are pleased that the Government are reversing the Conservatives’ disastrous decision to use first past the post for mayoral and police commissioner elections—it is ridiculous that one of the mayors elected this May won on just 25% of the vote—but the Government must go further in making votes fair. We believe that the Government should bring in the alternative vote system so that voters’ voices are properly heard. We maintain that if the Government believe in majority support for elected officials, they should extend that mandate to MPs and councillors, too.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon]

I can absolutely assure the hon. Member that we are working through those issues, and we will consult the sector on them. Given all the variations that we will take into account, I hope Members accept that we have listened. We know that the funding formula is out of date and that for it to stand the test it must apply wherever Members represent, whether in coastal communities, rural communities, inner or outer London or anywhere else in between. I assure the hon. Member that we are getting on with that work.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

Shropshire council’s finances have been left on the brink by 16 years of Conservative administration. It is the largest landlocked county in England, and it is struggling with about 85% of its budget being spent on social care. When the Minister does his fair funding review, will he look at the difficulty and costliness of delivering services over such a wide rural area and ensure that councils such as Shropshire, which has lost its rural services delivery grant, will be able to sustain themselves in the future?

[Jim McMahon]

We made available an additional £5 billion as part of the settlement, and £3.7 billion of that was for social care. We understand the pressures and we are directing money to address them, but we know that this issue will take more than one year to fix. We are on with the fair funding review—the third multi-year settlement in a decade—to begin to fix the foundations. We have definitely heard calls from rural communities and councils to take into account the additional cost for rurality and remoteness, and I assure the hon. Lady that those issues are being looked at.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 9th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Paul Holmes]

The hon. Gentleman asks whether I have any proposals. The last Government built the largest number of houses in history. There are many things that we agree need to be done, and there are some areas of this Bill that we agree with, but the hon. Gentleman needs to realise that taking power away from locally elected councillors is a disgrace. The Minister is saying to the hon. Gentleman and his councillors that they should not be trusted to make decisions on behalf of their local communities. I am sure he will not be happy with that when he gets to his annual general meeting in a few months’ time to be reselected as a parliamentary candidate.

There are other concerns about this legislation. As we have said, the Government have consistently said that they want to build 1.5 million homes, but the independent Office for Budget Responsibility—a body that Labour held in high regard when it was in opposition—has forecast that the Government will fail to deliver on their manifesto commitment and will fall short of that figure. As I have said, that was echoed today by Savills, which estimates that the Government will build just over half the number of houses that the Deputy Prime Minister has promised, even after coming out of her very testing meetings with the Chancellor.

The Government’s proposal to reduce the number of legal challenges available to opponents of major infrastructure developments from three to two—and in some cases just one—should alarm anyone who believes in checks and balances. Legal scrutiny is not an inconvenience; it is the backbone of our democratic system. Infrastructure projects often have far-reaching environmental, social and economic consequences, and by curtailing legal recourse, we are not removing red tape but removing the public’s right to hold power to account. In the name of speed, the Government are undermining the legal mechanisms that protect us from Government overreach.

As I have said, the clear implication of the Minister’s proposals today is that powers will be removed from locally elected planning committees. That is a disgrace, and it is in addition to a gerrymandering housing algorithm that punishes rural areas and rewards Labour councillors in urban centres for failure. We are told that the Bill will speed up planning decisions, but at what cost? Local planning authorities are indeed struggling, under-resourced and overburdened, but granting them fee-raising powers without guaranteed central support is like asking a drowning man to swim harder. More alarmingly, the shift of decision-making powers from elected councillors to unelected planning officers under the guise of efficiency diminishes local democracy. It takes key decisions out of the hands of public representatives and places them in the hands of a bureaucracy increasingly dictated by central policy.

We are also told that the Bill will make planning more strategic. That is a noble aim, but let us not forget that the strategic failure of recent years has been due not to too much local input but to too little co-ordination. The requirement for regional spatial strategies was scrapped by this Government’s predecessors. Now, the pendulum swings once again, with combined authorities being told to draft regional plans; however, those same authorities are being starved of the funding and staff required to do so. We risk repeating history, only this time with fewer safety nets and a weakened capacity to challenge flawed strategies.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

I chair the all-party parliamentary group on flooding and flooded communities, which is concerned that there are 6.3 million properties currently at risk of flooding—a figure that is forecast to rise to 8 million by 2050 because of climate change. However, the Bill does not really address climate change or any kind of flood resilience. Will the hon. Gentleman join me in urging the Minister to consider the amendments tabled by me and others that deal with building properties in areas that are at risk of flooding and lack flood resilience?

[Paul Holmes]

Of course. We discussed this topic at great length in Committee, and many good amendments were tabled. However, as I understand it and as I think the hon. Lady agrees, having reflected consistently the Minister has not strengthened the environmental protections or the measures to deal with flooding risks to housing that will be built in future. In fact, I would argue that those protections have been weakened. I hope the Minister will go away and look at these issues again.

Turning to environmental protections, we in the Conservative party say that they are under threat. The creation of environmental delivery plans sounds suitably wishy-washy, but this new centralised model turns bespoke ecological assessments into a bureaucratic chequebook exercise. While developers may cheer the ability to pay into a nature restoration fund instead of taking direct responsibility for mitigations, we should ask whether this is really restoration, or whether it is greenwashing.

On Natural England, I remind the Minister once again that the Bill Committee held a huge evidence session. He consistently said that he had confidence in Natural England’s ability to undertake the responsibilities he is seeking to impose on it, but time and time again he has outlined that he has allocated what I would argue is a mediocre sum of money to Natural England. He is asking that organisation to make decisions and improve environmental protections for people across this country, but he still has not outlined what funding model will be in place. The chief executive of Natural England herself stated, in very generic terms, that she was not entirely sure that she or her organisation would be able to undertake those operations going forward. The Minister should listen to the huge concerns across this House that Natural England is not the right organisation to undertake those responsibilities—rather, it should be local councils and local mayors. They should be the ones who represent their constituents and speak for local people, and who can make the changes they need on environmental protections.

Construction Standards: New Build Homes

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

Does the hon. Member agree that not only the house must be of a very high quality, but the surrounding estate that the house is built on? That is essential because the guarantees and building certificates that come with a home do not relate to that surrounding estate, and if there are problems with, for example, the drains or the roads, it can be very difficult to get them fixed, which is a nightmare for a new homeowner.

[Michelle Welsh]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention and I completely agree with her point, which my constituents have also raised with me. Homebuyers deserve to feel confident that their new home is safe and will not begin to crumble as soon as the key is in the door.

I will refer to the experience of one of my constituents with their new build home. Kelly and her husband Simon moved into their new home in Bilsthorpe in October 2024. They opted to go for a new build home because of their disabled son, thinking that a new build would be clean and that they would not have to spend much time adjusting it to meet their son’s needs.

Almost immediately, however, they realised that the high-standard and handcrafted home that they had been promised was not to be. They discovered numerous issues with the house. These included an incorrectly fitted and sized boiler cylinder, which left them without heating for three days; an improperly installed bath. which dropped and left gaps in the tiles; dirty tiles; damage to the flooring; and windows with scratches and stickers left on. I could go on. All of this was on top of the usual moving house stress. I know from my own experience that the days and weeks leading up to moving house are taken over by worry about what could go wrong. That a new home could contain even more nightmares is the last thing on someone’s mind.

When Kelly and Simon raised their issues with their constructors and builders, Harron Homes, they were met with more bad treatment. Through their complaints, my constituents learned that despite some of these issues being known to the site manager and sales executive, the home was in fact signed off. Harron Homes stated that there was “nothing to stop them” living in the property and that it was “happy” with the state of the home. I know everyone here will agree that the conditions my constituents faced in the house were certainly not good enough, and should have stopped them from being allowed to live in the property, especially with a disabled son.