Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

I am pleased to say that I am going to bring great joy to practically everyone in the Committee. That will make a nice change. Parish meetings are very important. In fact, it was our intention that parish councils, as identified in the Bill, would cover them. However, the noble Lord makes an important point. I will take it away and think about how we can accommodate it, so I hope that that will help. As regards the other issues he raises, for example in relation to joint waste authorities—when I write to noble Lords I shall certainly give as full an explanation as possible about the democratic arrangements as we see them—he has already argued that joint boards and joint committees should be included. I know that this is a probing amendment. We are agreed that this area is of great interest to people. I know from personal experience that nothing is more likely to exercise a local community than a decision on where to place landfill or incinerators. However, joint waste authorities are bodies on which local councillors sit. We believe it is very important that people are made aware of this and of how decisions about waste are made. People should be aware of the waste hierarchy and who they can talk to if they have concerns and issues. We think that these democratic arrangements are relevant. That is why they are included in the list. People need a greater understanding of this issue, because waste is one of those things that is divided up in terms of function in the two-tier authorities and there is a lot of confusion as regards collection and disposal. Therefore, there is a good case for including that. Complicated issues arise as regards social housing. I take the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, made. We tried to address that in part by including the HCA in the list. Although it is not often a direct provider, it directly funds certain projects and developments. Therefore, there is a strong relationship with local authorities. Amendment 46 seeks to add ALMOs and other providers of social housing under the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008. By the latter group, I believe he means ““registered providers””. This is the term in the 2008 Act which refers to bodies registered with the regulator of social housing—whose trading name is the Tenant Services Authority—and includes all current registered social landlords; that is, housing associations under another name. We had very long debates during the passage of the 2008 Act and previous Acts on why it is not appropriate to treat housing associations as public bodies. Housing associations are non-profit, private bodies, often charitable, with a long history of independence. They are very anxious to keep that status and we are very anxious to ensure that they do. They are not connected with local authorities in any formal way and are not normally their agents or contractors. I invite the noble Lord to revisit the debates that we had on the Homes and Communities Agency during the passage of the Housing and Regeneration Bill, in which I went to great lengths to explain that principle. Indeed, noble Lords agreed with that principle on which that Bill was based. That is where we still stand. These bodies must retain their private status. Having said that, because they are not public bodies, housing associations are not required to have democratic arrangements. However, during the passage of that Act, we also debated how housing associations could strengthen those arrangements to the benefit of their tenants. That was partly why we introduced the new regulatory functions. We are very clear that housing associations must have a responsive and responsible attitude to tenants, and involve them in the management of services. That Act was very much about promoting and supporting that. That was not the first time that we debated the status of those bodies. During the passage of the Local Government Act 2000, when we developed the duty to involve tenants, we had exactly the same debate on the same grounds about the importance of protecting the existing status of housing associations and the difficulty of including those non-statutory bodies in legislation. ALMOs comprise a different configuration. They are wholly owned, monitored and controlled by local authorities. They manage and improve the local authority’s housing stock but they are housing managers only. The local authorities retain their landlord status. ALMOs are required to have local authority members sit on their management board. They have a very close relationship with local authorities, but are not part of the local authority. They are separate entities. Local information should be provided about how many councillors sit on the management board, how it is managed and the relationship between the local authority and the ALMO. Bearing in mind stock transfers, that is very important. Members of the Committee raised other questions about the chief officer of police, and so on, and the links with other partners. In the interests of making progress, perhaps they will allow me to answer those questions in writing; that may be more satisfactory all round.