Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

Yes. The noble Lord should go to his local PACT; I am sure that he has them in Essex. We have a neighbourhood management organisation, which meets every two months; it is called a NAG—a neighbourhood action group, to which sometimes 30, 40 or 50 people turn up—and which keeps the more deprived parts of the area in a decent condition. We have a new town council that holds loads of meetings for the public. We have a town centre regeneration forum. We have an organisation called Colne Connected, a market town partnership with five or six different subgroups on all kinds of things, such as schools, parks and employment. We have Sure Start, which has its own committee. We have the Lancashire local committee, which I talked about yesterday. We have a market panel that looks after the council-owned market hall. The two local parks have friends groups, which are full of active people. We have two other nature reserves, which also have friends groups. And we have the customer panel, the tenants’ representational organisation within what is now Housing Pendle, the housing association from the large-scale voluntary transfer. Those are just the ones I thought of while I was writing them down; there are probably lots of others I have forgotten about. There is nothing special about this; Pendle is a normal town with lots of thriving local organisations—and many other organisations that are not thriving but do their best to keep going. This is the level at which people will get involved. It is all very well talking about the primary care trust, the strategic health authority and the Homes and Communities Agency, but if you really want to get people involved it is these organisations that you have to promote. They are the first layer on the ladder. People come and get interested in what is happening in their area, and then some of them move on to these other organisations, but it takes time. I put Pendle forward as an example, but almost any town you look at in the north of England could provide a similar list of local organisations. Unless what the Government are doing includes all those, the thing will not work. That was a bit of a diversion, but I thought that it was something the Committee ought to know about. Pendle is a nice town, and a lot of people get involved. Let us get more of them. I am supposed to be begging leave to withdraw Amendment 47.