The Ten Proposals Agreed by the former Minister, John Denham MP, in April 2010
Below are the 10 proposals made under the Act that the former Minister, John Denham MP, agreed in April 2010. Unfortunately, following the General Election in May 2010, these agreed proposals were 'unagreed':
1. Redbridge Borough Council proposed to relax the rules on the lighting of road signs to help cut installation and maintenance costs, energy consumption and light pollution.
2. Islington wants to make it compulsory for owners of empty business premises (mainly shops) to talk to councils about possibility of premises being used by the community, if they have been empty for 6 months.
3. Wirral and South Hams asked for communities to have the right to buy privately or publicly owned assets that are for sale in order to develop opportunities for community benefit.
4. Brighton and Hove put forward proposals to allow gardeners to sell surplus produce to local and markets.
5. Newcastle City Council, Ryedale District Council, and Darlington Metropolitan District Council all wanted action to address the problem of large pub and retail companies imposing restrictive covenants on pubs preventing them from continuing as pubs when sold.
6. Kettering, Redcar and Cleveland asked for changes in rules to allow local authorities to employ single teams of wardens capable of dealing with all civil enforcement issues.
7. Kent asked for funding to build a lorry park with 3000 parking places to address traffic problems locally which arise when the Kent Police implement Operation stack closing M20 in order to hold large volumes of freight traffic.
8. Several councils pressed the Government to look at ways to encourage the development of renewable energy within communities.
9. West Devon, Herefordshire and a number of other councils asked for a much wider role for Post Offices in communities including the provision of banking and financial services.
10. The Government is also backing a call from Wiltshire for this process to be ongoing by giving its support to the Sustainable Communities (Amendment) Bill.