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Parish Councils (Planning)

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. I want to deal briefly with housing and then go on to the generality of planning. The local council in Leigh-on-Mendip—a similar situation has arisen in the neighbouring council of Batcombe—feels that it is being held over a barrel by Mendip district council, which is saying, ““You must agree to this low-cost housing scheme, and you have a very limited time scale in which to do so, or the funding will be gone.”” This is a crucial matter for our community. These are small villages, and the pattern of housing will affect the environment for many years to come. The local council feels that it should have been involved in the process right from the start—that it should have been able to identify appropriate sites, allowed to consult its community in an effective way, and given a role in carrying it forward. It believes that it is inappropriate to be told that it has so many days, rather than weeks or months, to agree, or it will not have the development that it knows is needed by young people growing up in the community who do not want to go into exile from the village in which they grew up.