Sustainable Communities Act 2007 (Amendment) Bill

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I have been to a number of villages in the north of the constituency that I hope to represent, and some of them have held meetings to discuss this matter. However, there needs to be a cultural change as well as a legislative one. We need to change the culture among district councils and among those officiating and planning in those areas, so that they can accept a little more flexibility and reflect the needs and desires of local people much more than they have done historically. We must give people greater power over the policy and spending decisions that will forge the future of the area they live in for years to come. The Bill embodies that aim in letter, and I hope that the many contributions that we will hear today will embody it in spirit as well. It is impossible to look at the intentions and substance of the Bill without first scrutinising the Act that it seeks to amend—the Sustainable Communities Act 2007. Like today's Bill, the Act was introduced by a Conservative Member, my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd), as a private Member's Bill. After several previous attempts to take a sustainable communities Bill through the House, that one was successfully steered through Parliament in 2007, with cross-party support. As the Secretary of State said only last month, it is his intention for the Act to stand part of the permanent architecture of local government. I hope that those are all positive omens of things to come, as my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire takes his Bill through its Second Reading today. I was a strong supporter of the previous Bill when it passed into legislation in 2007, and I welcome the Act's initial success. All of us present in the Chamber know how important it is in fighting the corner of local decision making. It might be a comparatively short Act, but what it lacks in length, it more than makes up for in impact. The existence of the Sustainable Communities Act owes a considerable debt to the impassioned advocacy of Local Works, a coalition of about 90 national organisations fighting for the cause of localism. The sheer size and voracity of this coalition is a real testament to the strength of feeling about sustainable communities, and there is a clear appetite for further progress. A real catalyst for this campaign was the work done by the New Economics Foundation to highlight the danger of a ghost-town Britain if the decline in corner shops, grocers, banks, post offices and pubs—to name just a few—were to continue unabated. This would soon snowball into neighbourhoods and communities no longer being able easily to access what the New Economics Foundation aptly describes as""such essential elements of both the economy and the social fabric of the country"—" and, I might add, of our local communities. Tackling this worry head on, the 2007 Act sought to address the previous lack of a coherent Government strategy to arrest both the community decline that so many of us have seen in our constituencies and the lack of transparency and civic participation seen in the way resources are allocated to, and within, a community. Local and central government must attach greater priority to the long-term development and protection of communities—something that my constituents are definitely pleased about. The Act has two central elements: action plans for achieving and maintaining communities and local spending reports on public expenditure in local authority areas. What is so revolutionary about these action plans is the new chain of information established, flowing right through from the individual, through regional structures and directly to the Secretary of State in Government. This way, local residents have a direct say in proposing changes at a national level, which will help deliver sustainable projects locally. Under the purposely broad remit of grouping these proposals under the four headings of the environment, the local economy, social inclusion and democratic involvement, the scope of the Act is dramatically expanded, along with the power of local decision making. Theoretically, no matter how small the voice propounding it, if a proposed scheme will improve a community's sustainability in any of those four areas, it will be given a fair hearing by the Secretary of State and the appointed selector, the Local Government Association. Whether implemented or rejected, each proposal— and those who submit it—will be given feedback, ensuring that local people—those best able to diagnose specific localised problems—can provide tailor-made, practical and often highly innovative proposals to deal with specific local conditions.