DCLG blames congestion in Parliament for delay to Localism Bill

November 23, 2010

The Localism Bill, which was due to be published on Monday (22 November), has been hit by congestion in the Parliamentary timetable, the Department for Communities and Local Government has claimed.

Amid suggestions that the Bill has been hit by last minute wrangling – over the powers to be given to directly elected mayors outside London – and so could be delayed by weeks, a DCLG spokeswoman said: “We haven’t got a date for the Bill yet. It definitely will happen shortly.”

Earlier this month the DCLG business plan outlined the likely contents of the Bill. The legislation is expected to:

Give councils a general power of competence
Give residents the power to instigate local referendums on any local issue
Give residents the power to veto excessive council tax increases
Give local businesses the power to veto supplementary business rates
Increase transparency and local democratic accountability over decisions on local government senior pay
Scrap bin taxes
Abolish the Standards Board regime
Allow councils the opportunity to return to the committee system should they wish to
Give communities the right to save local facilities threatened with closure
Give communities the right to bid to take over local state-run services
Establish directly elected mayors
Introduce the government’s reforms for social housing, including affordable rent, tenure reform, social housing allocations, mobility, homelessness, overcrowding and council house finance
Incentivise local authorities to build new homes in the form of a New Homes Bonus and reform of the community infrastructure levy
Reform the planning system to give neighbourhoods “much greater ability” to shape the places in which they live, based on the Conservatives’ Open Source Planning document.