English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Vikki Slade and Miatta Fahnbulleh

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Public Bill Committees

[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.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Vikki Slade and Miatta Fahnbulleh

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

Q You make the point about creating organisations and capacity that reflects the will and want of the people. A big part of that is diversity and representation. One of the challenges that we have had in the community sector is that it tends to be those parts of the community who have the social capital, the time and so on who are at the forefront of that. I am interested in your views on what we should be thinking about to ensure that whatever neighbourhood governance structures we create are genuinely representative and have that diversity of views and opinions to genuinely drive the will and want of the community.

Sacha Bedding: The first thing is that we have to make it accessible. I will always advocate for a community organising approach, because I think that releasing people’s agency, so that they feel that they can take action on the things they care about, is a route to that. However, whether it is asset-based community development, old traditional community development or community organising, that is where we start. We start where people are, not where we would like them to be.

If we can do that and resource that, there are thousands of people willing to roll up their sleeves and get involved where they live. I see it every day; you see it in your constituencies every day. This is not some great big secret—it is just, “Go out and ask them.” On the flipside of that, our sector, like every other sector, has been hammered for a long time, but releasing the skills and talents of local people to take action on the things they care about will answer that question.

[Vikki Slade]

Q I absolutely support your comment about the reopening of the community improvement fund or similar, but last week we had the Museum of Broken Dreams downstairs, which showcased some incredible projects that had failed due to various issues. This Bill is a good start, but does it go far enough? For example, it is great to see supporting assets included, but are they the right ones? What about environmental assets—places within communities for nature and open space? Would they be something you would be interested in expanding to?

Sacha Bedding: I do not work in an area of environmental concern. If there are environmental opportunities in places, the broader the scope of what we consider an asset of community value to be, the better, in my opinion. I do not think we should prescribe that it must be bricks and mortar. For us in Hartlepool, things such as long-term plans for neighbourhoods should include the sea. That is our greatest asset, after the people who live there, and every community plan could involve the sea, for example. The environmental opportunities are there; whether we can distinguish whether they are social or environmental does not matter—let us expand the scope.

However, we should also look at the right to shape public services, because too often the people who are receiving services do not have a stake in the design of those services and the right to control investment. That is a big one. I do not mean, for example, Hartlepool getting 10 nuclear modular power stations, although that is great news; I mean at the neighbourhood level, where houses can be built, or not built, as we have just heard. People should have a stake in that decision. If you want more housing built, work alongside people who live in that community now. Do not just internally exile them, flatten the houses and say, “Hard luck, son.” That is not an answer.

The more expansive the assets of community value are, the better. The opportunity to expand the community rights is there, and it makes more sense for everybody. On homelessness strategies, where people are still on the streets and we are spending hundreds of thousands of pounds, or a literacy strategy, where one in three people is illiterate and that works with cohesion, if people can bring those together, they will coalesce around a place, and they can do that far better if those rights are enhanced.

ECO4 and Insulation Schemes

Debate between Vikki Slade and Miatta Fahnbulleh

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

I will absolutely meet my hon. Friend to discuss spray foam insulation. Given the correspondence and parliamentary questions I have received on this issue, I offer to meet with hon. Members more broadly, because we need to ensure that we are listening to constituents. If the work was done under the green homes grant, we need to think about how we can get the system to respond as it should. I give that commitment to him and other hon. Members across the House who have cases in their constituencies and are worried about this.

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

I apologise to the Minister, because like the hon. Members for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) and for Bolton West (Phil Brickell), and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon), I will raise the issue of spray foam. My constituent Matt was told that his house was unmortgageable with the nation’s largest building society, despite his paying extra for an extensive survey of his timbers to prove that there was no problem. He has since been forced to replace his roof at a cost of £21,000 just to get a chance to remortgage and perhaps one day sell his house. The roofing companies told him that the market is booming for spray foam removal by the very same people who put it in, which feels like exploitation. How will the Government address that, and why are Government sites still promoting and recommending spray foam insulation?

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

It is important to stress that the Government never recommend a particular solution. The approach that the last Government took and that we have adopted is that, in the end, people have to find the right measure for their home. We never promote any particular measure.

I acknowledge that there is a problem with spray foam, and that installers in the market are putting spray foam in properties where it is not fit for purpose. We have been doing a lot of work with colleagues at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to respond to that point about lenders. If there are specific cases where a lender finds something problematic despite a survey saying that it was absolutely fine, please feed that through to us, as we are continuing to work with the industry on that. There should not be a blanket ban.

It is important to stress that where spray foam insulation is carried out well and is appropriate for a property, it is a good thing, but I agree that there are too many cases where it has not been carried out well and is not appropriate. I therefore extend an offer to meet. We need to think about what we will do in response. We have inherited this system, and I wish I could change the past, but I cannot. What we can do is draw a line under it. We can absolutely ensure that we reform the system so that this never happens again, and so that we can command the trust of consumers.