I apologise for arriving a little late. Trains from the West Country are operating rather badly because of bad weather and the London Tube is operating really badly just because it is the London Tube, but it is a delight to be here now.
Before I speak, I should draw attention to one of my interests which I have previously declared. I am the president of the National Association of Local Councils, and I will be speaking on an issue that it has raised. It is reflected in some of my noble friend’s comments.
It is clear that the great majority of neighbourhood plans that have been brought forward are in parished areas. I have represented a local community for many years, and I continue to live in one, and I have chaired a neighbourhood plan process initiated by a parish council. It is very obvious that parish councils, in communities where they exist, are very successful in moving things forward in representing community interests. In the context of neighbourhood planning, they provide an essential vehicle for initiating a plan, ensuring there is proper accountability to the wider community and, in the absence of sufficient funding for some of what happens, providing funding. In the case of our own neighbourhood plan, we initiated at a point where there was no government funding at all for the interregnum because the old fund had run out and the new one had not been established. The parish council, although a very small and poor one, was able to step into that breach.
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Therefore, I think that it is really important both for neighbourhood planning and for planning more widely to establish parish councils wherever possible. They are not always welcome to the district or county authorities in which they operate, because they can run counter to an individual council’s views or a more general council view, but that is a healthy tension and one that should be in place.
I wanted to use this amendment as a hook to say to the Government that I think that efforts should be made to see parishing not only across all rural areas but across equivalent democratically accountable bodies in urban areas at the local neighbourhood scale. As I said, this is something that the National Association of Local Councils has argued for.
I want to say something else on which I am not sure whether the national association agrees, so I am definitely not speaking on its behalf. My own view is that every so often there should be an intelligent review of the borders of parishes and the forms they come in. The truth is that historically they were established for very different purposes and very different reasons based on the church boundaries. For the purposes in which they now operate, that can often be deeply illogical.
Taking my own neighbourhood plan as an example, it was a very defined community for the most part and it made a lot of sense. However, one essential area—the Victoria Business Park on the edge of the A30—has a parish boundary running right through the middle of it for no particular reason. It clearly relates to our parish and the A30 is on the other side of it, so it relates not at all to the neighbouring parish. The boundary reflects the historic A30 and not the new dual carriageway. In any case, having a boundary running down the middle does not necessarily make sense if there are things on either side of it.
Similarly, our parish extends right to the edge of Bugle. This is a village in the next-door parish and it has grown in a form that has taken it into our parish.
Frankly, it made no sense that, in theory, our neighbourhood plan dealt with things that clearly belonged primarily to another community and had no impact on almost all of those in our parish.
Therefore, although I understand the sentiment around historic boundaries, I believe that a relatively simple process for review, particularly when development growth of one sort or another materially changes the nature of the settlement patterns and how they relate to the parishes, would be useful. I just wanted to take the opportunity to say that and to prompt the Minister to comment.