Comment: Sustainable Communities Act is key to reversing community decline

Independent traders and businesses are fighting off incursions onto the high street by the big chain stores and supermarkets.
Caroline Lucas MP
Earlier this week, I hosted an adjournment debate in parliament to draw attention to the frustrating delays over the next phase of the Sustainable Communities Act – and to ask the government why progress seemed to have ground to a halt.
The Act, which became law in 2007 as a result of a long and widespread grass-roots mobilisation campaign organised by Local Works, has enormous potential to protect and encourage local trade and services, and to strengthen communities. And its emphasis on community control and empowerment should certainly be in keeping with the government’s professed support for localism and the ‘big society’.
Yet despite a successful first round of proposals made under the Act in 2009, delays in implementing the 2010 amendment to it to allow for future proposals have created uncertainty for those keen to put forward new solutions to the problems most sharply affecting their communities.
So I was delighted – not to mention a little taken aback – when the decentralisation minister Greg Clark announced in response to my speech at the debate that the consultation required to open the door to future proposals will start immediately. This is great news for the many organisations, ranging from the Women’s Institute to the Federation of Small Businesses, whose members and branches are eager to play a part in this process.
Why is the Act so important? Well, in so many ways, our communities have become unsustainable. In the past decade, Britain has lost a quarter of all its post offices, a quarter of all its independent newsagents and a fifth of all its bank branches. Even in places which boast thriving local economies, like my Brighton Pavilion constituency, independent traders and businesses are fighting off incursions onto the high street by the big chain stores and supermarkets, and the relentless march of the high street clones is beginning to taking its toll.
Research such as the New Economics Foundation’s ‘Ghost Town Britain‘ report has revealed the extent of the problem, exacerbated by the prevalence of out-of-town shopping centres, the push to run public services such as our post offices for private profit, the legacy of gaping social inequality and disengagement from the political system.
The prime minister has placed enormous faith in what he calls the ‘big society’, but without adequate resources, it is unreasonable to expect that people will have the capacity, skills, time and wherewithal either to plug the gap left by cuts to public services – or to provide the intensive input required to facilitate genuine community development.
Of course, we all know of inspiring individuals who make a difference in their neighbourhoods and of projects that turn lives around. But that is not the same as the kind of infrastructure that allows for long-term, community-controlled sustainable engagement in the transformation of our society.
The Sustainable Communities Act 2007 was borne out of a recognition that the best efforts of local citizens and communities are often not enough to address the overwhelming trend of community decline – and aims to reverse some of the interconnected problems which are causing it. I remember speaking at a large public meeting organised by Local Works in Brighton back in 2004, when the sustainable communities bill had only just entered parliament. The high attendance at that meeting, and at many more across the country, was an early sign of how the idea had caught people’s imagination. It struck a chord with communities who were fed up with seeing the decline of the places where they lived and worked, but who felt powerless to do anything about it.
The Act essentially created a mechanism by which people can drive government action to create local sustainability. In this bottom-up process, communities and councils are invited to put forward proposals; central government then has a duty not only to consult, but to co-operate and reach agreement with an independent selector body on which of the proposals will be implemented.
Proposals in the first round in 2009 were wide-ranging, and included measures to protect local post offices, shops and trade, and pubs; measures to increase the production and sale of local food; measures to promote local renewable energy, microgeneration and energy efficiency; measures to protect local public services; and measures to increase democratic participation.
As a result of that process, the government will make it easier to introduce renewable energy schemes by bringing in permitted development rights for small-scale renewable and microgenerational energy. It has also agreed to establish a community right of purchase, which will allow communities to bid to take over local assets. A moratorium on the sale of listed assets will give community groups time to prepare a bid. The planning rules are due to be amended to exclude gardens from the classification of “previously developed land”, and the government has backed community calls for a ban on the sale of alcohol below cost price, preventing supermarkets from selling alcohol below a certain price floor.
These are positive outcomes, with local communities having a direct say in shaping their futures. Now the government has finally given the green light to the next phase, one of my main hopes is that this Act will bring about new regulations to help local people in my Brighton Pavilion constituency and beyond restrict the number of large chain stores that pose a threat to the character of our cities – and to stop the aggressive expansion of the big supermarkets.
In the meantime, we need to respond in strength to the consultation, ensure that the decision-making process is as transparent and accountable as it can be, watch for any watering down, and then make full use of the new powers to maintain the momentum towards revolutionising the role that local communities play in shaping their future.
Caroline Lucas is the Green party MP for Brighton Pavilion.
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