Cllr Jackie Brodie

Liberal Democrat District Councillor for Bushell Ward

Forde Place, Newton Abbot, writes:

Our Conservative MP portrays herself as the saviour of local community decision-making in last week’s Mid-Devon Advertiser telling us that she has campaigned for several years for a Community Right of Appeal on Planning Decisions.

Perhaps it hasn’t dawned on her yet that the reason that she hasn’t been successful in her campaign is because her government is just not interested in promoting local decision making.

Let’s examine the evidence. Firstly, this government, in a bid to fast track fracking, has changed planning rules to allow ministers to intervene on planning applications for this controversial energy source, if local authorities fail to make a decision quickly enough. This will mean that Ministers will then make the decision, possibly ignoring local community views.

Also, the government has recently consulted on changes to national planning legislation to allow the development of ’small sites’ outside settlement limits defined in Local Plans.

This will lead to a large increase in speculative planning applications for housing outside Local Plan allocations, undermining the Local Plan, and will mean communities will have little interest in making a Neighbourhood Plan if it could be so easily overridden

In the same consultation, the government plans to end the requirement for rural housing sites to provide for local affordable housing needs ’in perpetuity’. This will undermine public and parish support for rural housing sites if residents feel that any housing they support will not remain affordable for local people.

Also, the government is now forcing councils to sell off higher value social housing. These are council and Housing Association properties, not the governments!

There are many other examples of this government taking away decision making powers from local communities including of course the government’s recent proposal, to force all schools to become academies, flying in the face of the wishes of many local communities. A U-turn on this one followed other U-turns for example, abolishing tax credits, demonstrating that this government is completely out of touch with what people around the UK want to see in their communities.

While the government pipes on about localism, and devolution of powers, our local democracy continues to fall off the cliff edge under this government. By contrast Liberal Democrats are the persistent defenders of local democracy, arguing that what a local community can do for itself is best left to that community, without interference from central government. Come and join us for the fight back against central government control of local democracy.