---

Rural Communities (Recession)

I am not directly familiar with the case, but I am sure that like all local authorities, Northumberland county council has to make difficult choices because of a variety of things such as the decline in return on investments and the reduction in local government funds. The hon. Gentleman will have to forgive me, however, as I do not know the detail of the issue; I promise to find out. If we are to try to solve the problems faced by rural communities, we have to start with housing. According to the Government's own Commission for Rural Communities, 100,000 young people are set to leave such areas in the next three years, principally because of a lack of affordable housing. There is therefore a desperate need to create homes that will enable those young people to stay and their communities to thrive. We must scrap the Government's remote, counter-productive and undemocratic regional spatial strategy and instead empower local communities to build homes with community backing. Michael Heseltine once referred to the planning and development policy of the 1980s as DADA—"decide, announce, defend, abandon". The regional spatial strategy is clearly a recipe for more DADA. Let us give communities the power to create the homes that they need in the places where they are needed. Why not follow in the footsteps of the Liberal Democrat-controlled South Lakeland district council, which has adopted the home on the farm initiative? That could see hundreds of unused or underused farm buildings converted into affordable homes for local families. Homes could be built in the back yards of people who actually want them there.