I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I hope that such discussions might be forthcoming in my county.
My district council officers, like so many, worked their socks off to try to deliver levelling-up bids. It was the smaller bids in rural locations that so often missed out in the first round of funding. I will take this opportunity to plug Ilfracombe’s bid, against a planning backdrop of no staff and multiple district councils all battling the same issues.
Why is this important? Of the 10 most economically vulnerable parts of Devon, five are in my North Devon constituency—three in Ilfracombe and two in Barnstaple. The response of the county council leader when discussing possible unitary groupings was that no one wanted Barnstaple. That is entirely clear from the way we are treated by our county council.
However, let me take this opportunity to thank the numerous councillors who do such great work in our local communities. Fifty-eight councils is a lot. Many of them are marvellous, with great rural solutions from hard-working volunteers; others make Dibley look well-functioning and progressive. Changes we made to the monitoring of parish councils make it near impossible to remove a parish councillor, whatever they do. I hope that can be revisited. If only we could remove some of the layers of bureaucracy and avoid duplication, and find better ways to share best practice in a rural environment, we could achieve so much more.
I have touched on the housing challenges in North Devon and so many rural and coastal communities. The influx of second homes and short-term holiday lets, and the lack of regulation in the market, makes housing the No. 1 challenge for so many communities like North Devon. Doing nothing is simply no longer an option. The fabric of our society cannot survive with no one
available to work because there is nowhere for them to live. I covered this issue in detail only last week, so I will spare the House today, but I very much hope that the proposed amendments to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill will be adopted to begin to tackle these issues, alongside the long-awaited Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport consultation on registration schemes for Airbnbs.
I have chosen not to speak today about our beautiful environment and our fabulous farmers, who have numerous levelling-up challenges of their own. I very much hope that next week’s announcement on environmental land management schemes will be favourable to their finances, and I hope that colleagues will tackle these issues. I wanted to highlight some of the realities of rural living, behind the chocolate-box façade. We have to find ways to join up our thinking here at Westminster and recognise that, if we want to level up rural Britain, it is not just the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that can deliver that. Not only do councils clearly need funding to tackle the additional costs that rurality brings, but their structures need urgent reform.
The now Prime Minister was a signatory to the application for the debate while he was in between jobs, so to speak. From speaking with him last night, I have confidence that rural Britain will be better cared for, and that levelling up will reach into our remote, beautiful communities. When I came to this place in 2019 and first spoke about levelling up Ilfracombe, which is home to two of the poorest wards in Devon, I hoped that levelling up would, by this point, have delivered more than just an asylum hotel. I will continue to champion the need for levelling up rural Britain.