Localism Bill

My Lords, in addressing the House for the first time in nearly a dozen years, I first express my appreciation and gratitude to the Cross-Bench electorate for having readmitted me and for the warm welcome that I have received from many noble Lords since I arrived back. As recycled material, I hope that my utility and usefulness will not be too limited. Like many other noble Lords, I have many interests to declare: I am the president of the National Association of Local Councils, which represents parish and town councils, and of its Sussex county associations; I am a landowner and a practising chartered surveyor—I am afraid that planning and development, valuation and all those other things form part of my general remit; and I have recently been involved with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors land and society commission, which has just reported its findings on community issues and property. My comments will necessarily be general but, first, I thoroughly welcome the Bill and the localism agenda. It is high time for them. The realignment of the way that society manages its affairs, possibly for future generations, is very important. We need to trust communities more and to connect the citizen with government at all levels. However, this sort of cultural change in attitudes will need a long timescale to bed in. We have had decades of social, economic and political underinvestment, which have to be reversed. I consider that the parish and town councils, with community and voluntary organisations, are more than up for this and I pay tribute to the superb examples of collaboration already taking place—the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, referred to one of those. The Bill is full of good ideas but little detail. I have to share the concerns about something claiming to empower communities but having the immediate effect of handing substantial powers to Ministers. On the power of general competence, the recognition in the Bill that parish and town councils are particularly well placed to take on much of the localism challenge is enormously welcome. Those councils are essentially creatures of place and locality—homogeneous they are not—and they range from very small parish meetings to huge town councils. Numerically, there are about 8,500 of them across the country but their statutory status, neighbourhood roots, principles of independence and democratic and financial accountability have been much underrated. Their precepting power puts them firmly in the category of local government. The general power of competence will up their game and provide a catalyst for renewed vigour. Yet they work on relatively tiny budgets and, however one organises non-parished areas in future, the neighbourhood equivalents are going to need to be based on some of these principles and have some of the resource implications to contend with. Assuming, of course, responsibility for taxpayers’ money, objective service delivery and public confidence are the aims, then those sorts of benchmark are important. As for standards, while agreeing with a light touch, I would certainly support the suggestions of the Committee on Standards in Public Life that its seven principles be embedded overly, and perhaps more enforceably, in this Bill than appears at the moment. The plans for local referendums, by contrast, look top-heavy and bureaucratic at parish level and they risk undermining the very purpose that they set out to achieve. This part of the Bill needs to be reconfigured on a more local scale. Many noble Lords have mentioned assets of community value. All I would say—I do not wish to repeat what others have said—is that I do not believe that this was asked for by the parish and town council sector. Local people want the ability to secure those things, especially services, that make their community vibrant, cohesive and viable; they do not need much anything more than that. There will be an impediment to market processes and that is greatly to be regretted. However, the right for these communities to bid for functions where principal authorities do not or cannot economically provide them is welcome, and I think that the Bill needs reinforcing in this area. I will skate over the spatial strategies issue, except to follow the noble Lord, Lord Reay, in saying there is already a vacuum, with developers taking pot-shots at the system through the planning appeal process. That needs to be dealt with quickly if communities and the whole principle of planning are not to be subverted. There is a huge issue of resources. We need to build social capital and a results-based process that will drive greater individual and collective engagement in local affairs. We also need things to be local in scale in terms of their complexity and bureaucracy and, of course, we also need accountability.