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Tag: Emma Reynolds

  • Emma Reynolds – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

    Emma Reynolds – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Emma Reynolds on 2015-01-15.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, how many community-led developments have completed as a result of the Community Right to Build.

    Stephen Williams

    A key priority for the Coalition Government has been to give communities greater control over shaping the development of their area. The Localism Act 2011 created new powers for communities to write their own neighbourhood plans and to gain planning permission for community-led development through Neighbourhood Development Orders and Community Right to Build Orders.

    Nearly 1,400 communities, covering six million people, are now engaged at different stages of the neighbourhood planning process, giving millions of people the chance to participate in identifying, and voting on, where development takes place and what it looks like. All 52 referendums held to date have resulted in big ‘yes’ votes and 34 plans have been ‘made’ (brought into force) and therefore are part of the development plan, the starting point for determining planning applications.

    The popularity of neighbourhood planning has shown that when given the opportunity, communities are keen to shape future development in their areas, and we expect the number of community-led developments to increase as more neighbourhood plans are finalised. Over the last two years there have been over 3,100 enquiries and 14,000 web hits relating to the Community Right to Build. The Community Right to Build gives communities the freedom to build new homes, shops, businesses or facilities where they want them, without going through the normal planning application process. Experience has shown that following discussions with the local planning authority for community-led development proposals, community groups have chosen to submit a planning application for their project, rather than a Community Right to Build Order.

    To ensure groups undertaking community-led development have the right support and advice to gain planning approval, we broadened the remit of available support funding to assist community groups to bring forward development either through Community Right to Build Orders or community-led planning applications.

    This has led to significant take up of funding for community-led projects coming forward, with over 100 applications for funding already approved by the Homes and Communities Agency and the Greater London Authority. Locality and their partners have also been working with 60 groups to provide assistance and advice.

    The first three referendums for Community Right to Build Orders took place in December, all of which were passed and are now in force.

    We have allocated a further £3.5 million to support the Community Right to Build and community-led planning applications for housing in 2015-18. On 17 February, my department announced a further £6 million funding boost to the community rights programme. This new funding will mean:

    • like-minded communities will be able to network and learn from each other through the new My Community Network;
    • communities will have access to tailored advice through a phone and online advice service to help them use the range of community rights and other neighbourhood approaches;
    • 100 more neighbourhoods will be supported to use the Our Place approach, enabling councils and other public sector providers, voluntary and community groups, local businesses and the community to work together to tackle important local issues from job creation to health priorities;
    • 100 communities will receive support to take the first steps in identifying important local issues and develop Community Action Plans;
    • 50 communities will receive support to develop economic plans to address local economic priorities like job creation and enterprise;
    • 50 local authority/community partnerships will receive advice, support and grants to support the transfer of multiple or complex publicly owned assets into community ownership; and
    • 6 new contracts have been awarded to external partners to support communities in using the community rights in 2015-16.

  • Emma Reynolds – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

    Emma Reynolds – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Emma Reynolds on 2015-01-15.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, how many procurement processes have been triggered as a result of the Community Right to Challenge.

    Stephen Williams

    The Department does not collect or collate administrative data from local authorities on the number of Expressions of Interest they receive under the Community Right to Challenge. We do however carry out follow up surveys with community groups and parish councils that have used the Community Right to Challenge support service. The Department also collates intelligence from local authorities, where they speak to us about an Expression of Interest.

    From this, we are aware of 51 Expressions of Interest submissions to councils, but this is not a comprehensive figure. Of these, we know of seven completed procurement exercises, four of which have resulted in the organisation that submitted the Expressions of Interest winning a contract. We know of two other cases where an Expression of Interest has been accepted and a procurement triggered, but not completed.

    We know that voluntary groups remain interested in the Community Right to Challenge. The most recent follow up survey of organisations using the Community Right to Challenge support service showed that a further 43 groups, out of 105 respondents, were intending to submit an Expression of Interest in the next 12 months.

    We do know that Challenge is recognised by the voluntary and community and parish sectors as being helpful in opening up relationships with lcoal authorities. In a recent survey of 188 enquirers to the advice service, 25% were in negotiation with their council on potential commissioning and said negotiation had come about as a direct result of the Challenge legislation. Almost half (48%) felt that their local authority was more open to contracting with eligible bodies than before the legislation came into force and 25% were working with ttheir authorities on commissioning as a result of the legislation. 70% felt the support they received had improved their contrct readiness and 82% were expecting to bid for the delivery of public services. Timescales for procurement exercises are sdignificant but we are working with support providers to monitor the number of organisations that succeed in winning contracts.

    This information is informing our future programme of work especially around commissioning processes. Community groups advise us that they are encouraged by the shift in culture and the changing mind-sets of procurement and commissioning officiers in councils across England as a result of the Localism Act 2011. They tell us the community rights have prompted many councils to examine how local public services are commissioned in their area.

    Through our support programme we have supported 376 groups with specialist referrals and provided 216 groups with financial assistance to develop their capacity to bid for and deliver services.

  • Emma Reynolds – 2019 Speech on the Withdrawal Agreement

    Below is the text of the speech made by Emma Reynolds, the Labour MP for Wolverhampton North East, on 12 March 2019.

    It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson). We might go through different Division Lobbies tonight, but I share her priority for safeguarding our constituents’ jobs and livelihoods. That is what is driving my decision to vote against the motion tonight, and I want to set out three reasons why I will be doing that. First, for many of us on the Opposition Benches, the package that the Prime Minister has brought back from Strasbourg at the eleventh hour totally misses the point. Our concerns about her deal have nothing to do with the Northern Irish backstop. In these debates about exiting the European Union, right hon. and hon. Members have expressed concerns about the economy and trade three times more often than concerns about the backstop.

    This last-minute deal, which really has not changed much, is just the latest chapter in the Tory party’s Brexit divisions and melodrama. When the Prime Minister says that she is listening to Parliament, she is actually listening to hard-line Tory Brexiteers and her confidence and supply partners, the DUP. When she says that she is acting in the national interest, she is actually putting her party’s interests above the prosperity of our constituents. She encourages us to come together, but she has done little to reach out across the House to appeal to Labour Members and other Opposition MPs. When it comes to the deal tonight, this is the first time that I can remember in British history that a PM and Chancellor have recommended a course of action that, according to their own economic analysis, will make people worse off and our economy smaller. The people did not vote in the 2016 referendum to be poorer, and I cannot in all conscience vote for a deal that makes my constituents poorer and the country less safe.

    Secondly, as the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) said in his eloquent contribution, the Government have not levelled with people about the trade-offs and hard choices that should be made on Brexit. For example, Brexiteers claimed that trade deals with the US, India, Japan, Australia and New Zealand will boost our prosperity, but there is not a shred of evidence that those trade deals—even if agreed quickly and in our favour, on which the International Trade Secretary is not exactly doing a great job—would result in more jobs and investment than we would lose if we loosen our ties with the EU, which is our most important market and the destination of most of our exports. That is why it was so foolish of the Prime Minister to make leaving the customs union and the ​single market her red lines from the word go. If only she had dropped those red lines, she may have managed to build true cross-party consensus for an alternative deal.

    The irony of today’s debate is that it is all about reassuring hard-line Brexiteers that the UK will be able to pull out of the backstop, which is in essence about the UK leaving the customs union. However, just-in-time manufacturers in the food, automotive and aerospace industries, which employ tens of thousands of people across the country and thousands in my constituency, have stressed time and again the importance of frictionless trade and the customs union with the EU and of avoiding no deal. Supermarkets have warned that a no-deal scenario and any delays at the border would put food prices up, and the car and aerospace industries have warned that delays at the border will destroy just-in time manufacturing. Indeed, because of the threat of no deal we have seen companies big and small already taking decisions to put investments on hold. We have had bad news from Nissan in Sunderland and terrible news about Honda, and BMW has said that no deal would lead it to shift production elsewhere. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) said, the car industry should be the jewel in the crown of our economy, but the Government’s irresponsible actions are putting that at risk.

    Thirdly, I am not prepared to vote for a blindfold Brexit. The political declaration is vague and non-binding. We were told by Tory Brexiteers a couple of years ago that the trade agreement with the EU would be the “easiest in human history” but as Ivan Rogers, the UK’s former permanent representative to the EU, so eloquently put it only the other day:

    “We cannot live in glorious isolation. Talk to the Swiss and to the Norwegians—they live in a permanent state of negotiation with the EU.”

    To those who say that we should vote for the deal tonight so that we can get things over and done with and move on because people are fed up, I say that boredom is not a good reason for taking an important decision about the future of our country. The negotiations will go for years and years and years.

    I hope that the deal is defeated tonight, and I hope that we then vote against no deal tomorrow. It would be the height of irresponsibility. We have heard the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) and the hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns) actually recommending a no-deal Brexit, which would be catastrophic for jobs, livelihoods and the wider economy, but do not take that from me; take it from Jaguar Land Rover and from businesses up and down the country.