Your views on devolution, housing and solar installations
Here are the letters from the January 24, 2025 edition of the Lynn News…
Democracy in our borough is now at risk
West Norfolk democracy is at risk with Government plans to abolish borough councils and install a tax-raising elected Mayor for Norfolk and Suffolk.
Areas like West Norfolk will lose control.
The White Paper, rushed out just before Christmas, is clear that Government wants to abolish all borough councils, and set up super councils called unitaries, each with 500,000 plus residents. Take local democracy away from local communities, while saying it wants decisions made locally.
A thousand years of borough councils that oversaw local growth in Norfolk's market towns could disappear in two years. This would leave Lynn, without any form of town government at all.
West Norfolk Council represents 150,000 residents over 550 square miles and is the second largest district by land area. Its abolition would take skills and spending power out of the rural economy, the opposite of the Government’s stated aim to grow the rural economy.
During the pandemic, it was borough councils that delivered help to residents. Dismantle the structure at your peril.
The county Conservatives want one unitary council for the whole of Norfolk, but Norfolk is too large, its population too dispersed and public transport too poor for this to be effective, with 700 villages and towns.
But there have been alarming developments. Norfolk County Council held an extraordinary general meeting on January 9. I spoke and voted against joining the Government’s Fast Track Devolution Programme to set up an elected mayor and Combined Mayoral Authority, to be followed by a Unitary. But the majority voted in favour.
But county councillors do not have the mandate to give Norfolk's sovereignty away. Norfolk does not belong with Suffolk. Norfolk residents firmly rejected an elected mayor for Norfolk and Suffolk, and new mayoral authority in the 2016 county consultation. Residents did not want to pay for another tier of Government and thought it would give too much power to one person, and be too remote.
The mayor would have compulsory purchase powers, could become police commissioner and take over the Fire Service, set up a Mayoral Development Corporation and overrule local planning.
Government has doubled the borough's housing targets but reduced London’s quota. Local areas would lose control of planning. The Mayor would also be able to raise tax - put a mayoral precept on the council, a levy on the business rates and put a levy on developers for community infrastructure.
Immediately after the council meeting, the Conservative cabinet wrote to the Government, asking for May's county elections to be postponed.
Government pressured county councils to join the Fast Track Devolution Programme and wanted agreement by January 10 so it could possibly postpone May's elections.
The Government should be providing a sustainable future for adult social care and special needs, and multi-year financial settlements for councils, not bringing them down. This shows a lack of respect for local democracy. You can write to the Government with your views: EnglishDevolutionLGEnquiries@Communities.gov.uk
Cllr Alexandra Kemp
Lynn
Will we receive visits from the housing police
While I'm sure my MP Terry Jermy is concerned about the supposedly 'empty' houses in West Norfolk (Lynn News, January 10) and sees these currently uninhabited houses as potentially available to those who haven't a home, I'm wondering how this 'stark' and apparently 'alarming' data collected will be used.
Are we to have the housing police turning up on doorsteps and 'encourage' recalcitrant owners to allow the Borough Council to steamroller in and install homeless people in these premises?
Are increased financial penalties in the pipeline? Surely, it's still a free country and we're all entitled to use or not use our own private property as we wish?
Already we've got the first steps of state interference looming as the doubling of council tax for second homes and once that's established practice will we see West Norfolk Council seeking to bully single occupants of large three or four bedroom homes into selling up or face increased council taxes as a penalty for keeping bedrooms empty? We've already seen how Terry's supposedly 'socialist' Government axed the heating allowance despite the sub-zero temperatures, and one must question where 'Two Tier Kier's’ heartless axe will fall next. Perhaps my MP might like to suggest how we might force empty house owners to give up their ownership and rights over their own property?
My guess is you'll be waiting a long time for an answer... soundbite utterances, gesture politics and virtue signalling makes for good publicity. But if it’s only futile noise perhaps we could keep it to a minimum please.
Steve Mackinder
Denver
I have been left with a sour taste in my mouth
A small group of independent family-run solar installations companies attended parliament to show support for the Sunshine Bill which is to mandate solar on all new homes from October 2026.
For two hours and 30 minutes, we sat in the public gallery and listened to MP after MP stand up and applaud the MP who brought this Private Members Bill to the floor of the chamber. Not one MP objected although many raised quite legitimate concerns but from my knowledge of parliamentary process I did not hear anything that could not be thrashed out at committee stage.
Homes that have taken many years to get through planning and not suitable for solar, for example, could have been on the exception list. Thatched new builds, yes they do exist, could have been made exempt. All minor details that could have been looked at under further scrutiny at committee stage.
The Government did not support this bill and it was subsequently adjourned until July (just in for the 12 week summer recess).
I'm not going to list the Government’s objections here and I do understand their position but not one of the concerns raised couldn't have been thrashed out during due process.
For the 17 years that I have been flogging silicon to homeowners, not a day has gone by without me hearing: “Why don't all new homes have solar?” I read the letters page in the local papers where this line is repeated time and time again.
And then we hear of Ed Miliband’s unleashing of a rooftop revolution!
On the train home I received an email from my own MP who was responding to two letters I have written to him since July when elected.
I was thanked for raising the concerns regarding the monopoly energy companies have created within the residential solar sector and to provide further evidence, and the second point mentioned was that my MP was aware of the sunshine bill and that the second reading was going to be put before Parliament next week!
Responding to my letters, five months after sending one and on the very day the subject matter was being discussed, with incorrect information, has left a rather sour taste as I'm sure you can imagine.
Maybe I should write to MPs as the head of the national network of installers with over £250,000,000 revenue and over 500 years of combined experience between us, rather Kevin Holland the washed up ex-cop banging out tweets from a shed at the bottom of his garden.
They don't listen to people like me, but they will listen to people like us!
This is not over. Watch this space
Kevin Holland
CEO of The Solar Nation assured installer network
Magdalen
