Sustainable Communities Act 2007 (Amendment) Bill

My hon. Friend cites an admirable example of local community involvement provoking a change to what might otherwise have happened. The Sustainable Communities Act has allowed more of that to be engendered around the country and has given people the sense that they have some power. Let me digress for a moment before I come to the substance of the Bill. This has all posed serious issues for those of us in representative positions. We have taken it for granted for a long time that we do this job—people come to us, we make the decisions, we organise, we tell people what to do. When there is enormous trust and a clear bond between those who are elected and those who elect them, that is fine. However, experience in recent years has shown that that bond has been more difficult. We have seen the numbers of people voting at local council level decline steadily. We have had our own issues with the number of people voting in general elections in recent times and, of course, we have had the issues in relation to the authority of this House, which are too well known and painful to bear repeating. So to create a mechanism that encourages people to engage with their local authorities and with Government in a new way has been refreshing and exciting. My hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Newmark) illustrates how something can happen as a result of that positive engagement, and this new Bill is coming along to keep that going. I shall return to that point in a moment. I shall give one or two other examples of local authorities making use of the proposals under the Act. Hackney borough council suggested the introduction of wider powers for councils to reflect residents' views and influence the shape of local high streets, where the concentration of particular kinds of businesses can mean that the needs of local people are not met and local communities cease to be sustainable. Planning is an issue that has surely crossed all our desks at various times, when local communities seem, almost to a man and woman, to be against a particular proposal or have some particular idea, yet for some reason in planning law those views are not taken into account. Inspectors' decisions always seem to follow a line that the community cannot follow, and people wonder why their voice is the least heard voice in the entire process. As a final example, the Bristol city council panel proposed amendments to the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 to support the employment in local authorities of young people and people with learning difficulties. Thus, a range of ideas has been presented under the original Act. With all that in the pipeline, what need is there for the Bill? Successful though the previous Bill was in becoming an Act, there were one or two areas where, on reflection, more might have been done to fulfil the objectives behind the campaign and the Act. This Bill seeks to redress those omissions. Rather than wait for settled practice to surround the Act and an amendment to be made to it at a later stage, I, together with those who signed the early-day motion, which I remind the House is a majority of its Members, and campaigners outside believe it would be helpful to make changes now, before the procedures associated with the Act become set. At this point I should mention a technical matter. The long title of the Bill needs a short amendment. The House will be aware that the purpose of the long title is to ensure that when the Bill is drawn up in more detail at a subsequent stage, all the various elements have been captured at the time of First Reading. What is unusual today is that I hope to take the Bill through all its stages in the Commons at one time. Accordingly, I wish to give notice that should the Bill go into Committee, I will move a short manuscript amendment which, I believe, is available on the Floor of the House. It proposes that in line 1 of the long title, the words from "2007" to the end of line 3 should be left out. The amendment is designed with two aims—first, to remove the word "town", as legislation does not make specific mention of town councils. They are considered to be akin to parish councils, for which statutory definitions exist. Secondly, the amendment would knock out the word "expenditure", as there is no expenditure involved in the Bill. Both the Table Office and the Clerks have been informed of the proposed manuscript change. The substance of this short Bill is twofold. The intention behind the original Act was not to engage the interest of the community for a one-off round of proposals, which would then be subjected to scrutiny and eventual decision. It was, rather, to involve the public in a process with their local authorities and government, but no specific provision was made in the original Bill for a continuing process, despite the intention. This Bill seeks to achieve that. It therefore requires the Secretary of State to specify the date on which an invitation to make new proposals by way of a second round should be issued. This notice must be given by 1 January 2011, as set out in clause 2(2). We have got where we are today following negotiation with the Department for Communities and Local Government and with the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Stevenage (Barbara Follett), who is here today. I thank her and her officials who assisted her in arriving at this point. Those of us promoting the Bill have not got everything that we sought at the outset, but we have come to what we think is a realistic estimation of what can be achieved, and we are grateful to the Minister and her officials for assisting us to get to this stage. We believe we have a clear understanding that under clause 2, where we suggest in proposed new section 5B the power to make new regulations, this will allow for further proposals to be made in future and those regulations will be used to create the continuing process that we are looking for, having got one new starting date included in the Bill. I am particularly encouraged by the comments made by the Secretary of State in the House on 26 January:""I see no reason why the Act will not form a permanent part of the local-national relationship in this country."—[Official Report, 26 January 2010; Vol. 504, c. 667.]" Although the Bill contains only the date for the second round, we fully envisage that proposals will come forward for future rounds through the regulations and that they will make provision for that. In support of this part of the Bill, the Local Government Association says in its briefing for the debate:""The LGA Group supports the content of the proposed legislation. Councils supported the introduction of the original Sustainable Communities Act in 2007, recognising the unique opportunities it provided them to bid for additional tools to tackle issues specific to their locality. The LGA is specifically supportive of the proposals within this Bill to introduce a further round of submissions. This will remove some of the uncertainty which currently encompasses the future of the current round of proposals."" Councillor David Shakespeare, the leader of the Conservative group on the LGA, said:""It is vital that this process"—" he was referring to the process initiated by the original Act—""is continued . . . This new Bill will mean that the 'proposals to government process' ushered in by the 2007 Act will continue: a date for this and a stated ongoing process are essential—otherwise enthusiasm will turn to yet more cynicism about local political involvement.""Action is needed, anything less will send another negative signal to voters and lead to further withdrawal from activity."" Councillor Richard Kemp, the leader of the Local Government Association's Liberal Democrat group said:""It is crucial that the…process is ongoing, so that the involvement and engagement can continue. The Amendment Bill will ensure that the Act's process is ongoing."" Others who supported the original Act through Local Works have also made their support clear.