Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

The new clause and the associated amendments provide clarity about handling community governance petitions and reviews generally. In future, the Secretary of State will have no role in decisions about the creation, abolition or modification of parish councils. Those will be truly local decisions, as they should be. The Bill provides for local people to petition their local authority to conduct a community governance review. When a council receives a valid petition, it must conduct a review except in the following circumstance: when a petition is received within two years of the receipt of an earlier petition that related to the whole or a significant part of the same area as the recent petition. In such a case, the council need not treat the petition as valid. However, even in those circumstances, a council may treat the later petition as valid and conduct a review in relation to it, if it chooses. In contrast, when the principal council currently initiates a community governance review, it has no power to treat a petition received while it is undertaking the review or following the conclusion that a review is invalid. That inconsistency should be corrected. Accordingly, we want to give the principal council the flexibility to choose whether to conduct a review when a petition is received within two years of the conclusion of a review of the whole or a significant part of the petition area. The flexibility is necessary because we want to avoid a position whereby a local authority conducts a community governance review, recommends the creation of a parish council but, the following day, receives another petition requiring it to conduct another review of the same area. Providing a two-year discretionary period will allow authorities to be secure in the knowledge that they will not be required to conduct a review of the same area immediately after the completion of the initial review, but that they have the flexibility to do so if they choose. I hope that I have convinced the House of the merits of ensuring that the community governance review processes are consistent. The new clauses and amendments will deliver that. We have also tabled several technical amendments. I ask the House to accept the new clause to ensure that the devolved community governance review process works effectively.