Report on

West Dorset Partnership Annual Assembly

Dorford Centre, Dorchester, 17 November 2011

This meeting was entirely devoted to exposition and discussion of the Localism Act, which has just received the Royal Assent.  The new Act is said to release councils and communities from the grip of central government and to put a raft of new rights and powers at the disposal of local people.  The topics covered in the meeting were:

- Community right to challenge.  Voluntary and community groups, along with parish councils and local authority employees, will now have the right to express an interest in taking over the running of a local authority service.  In response to accepted challenges, the LA will run a procurement exercise in which the challenging organisation can bid.

-  Community right to bid.   Local authorities will be required to maintain lists of identified assets of community value (e.g. community centres, libraries, village shops, markets, pubs); and, if any such asset comes up for sale on the open market (risking closure or loss to private use), the Act gives community groups time (in fact, only 6 weeks) to develop a bid and raise the money to buy the asset to keep it in public use.

-  Community right to build.   A community organisation (including the parish council) will be able to bring forward development proposals for specific local sites, which, providing they meet minimum criteria and demonstrate local support through a referendum, will be able to proceed without a separate traditional planning application.  [Proposals may include new houses, social housing, businesses, shops, playgrounds, meeting halls.]

-  Neighbourhood planning.   To allow them to influence the future of places where they live, communities will have the right to draw up a neighbourhood plan.  Thus, it is envisaged that a community will come together – residents, employees, businesses – through the local parish council or neighbourhood forum to say where they think new houses, shops, businesses, etc. should be sited, and what they should look like.

These new procedures raise many questions, and not all the regulations governing them are yet available.  As was observed several times, the devil will be in the detail.  There appears to be a broadly-welcomed lessening in planning red tape; but communities – and these are widely differing animals, with widely different degrees of cohesion – will need to be vigilant in avoiding nimbyism on the one hand and exploitation by special interests on the other.  We shall see.

You can find information about the Localism Act and about the Department for Communities and Local Government’s wider work, at http://www.communities.gov.uk/corporate/whatsnew

Mike Jones

at jonesodowd@aol.com

20 November 2011