Eric Pickles

A great country is built on strong communities. And strong communities are built on the shoulders of individuals – ordinary people doing extraordinary things. As Communities Secretary I am privileged to witness this at first hand: proud residents confronting anti-social behaviour at their own personal risk; community leaders speaking out against sectarian divide; families refusing to be cowed by racist hatred. My priority in Government has been to fight for these people – to bring power to them and help them make their part of the world a better place. Devolution is not about new names for old quangos, as Labour did, but real power for local communities.

Under the last Labour Government, house building fell to its lowest peacetime level since the 1920s. Labour’s top-down Regional Strategies and eco-towns built nothing but resentment. Advised by Ed Balls and Ed Miliband, Gordon Brown engineered an economic bubble that resulted in a speculative bust and the biggest budget deficit in our peacetime history. This Government is clearing up the mess left by Labour. We are working with – not against  – local communities to help build more homes, scrapping Regional Strategies and rewarding development via decentralising local government finance - from the New Homes Bonus, to the local retention of business rates to a localised Housing Revenue Account.