Nandy promises to “smash up a century of centralisation” to rebuild Britain

Lisa Nandy will promise that a Labour government would “reimagine the state and smash up a century of centralisation” as the frontbencher sets out plans for new powers to allow people to rebuild Britain “one community at a time”.

In a speech to the Locality Convention in Sheffield this afternoon, the Shadow Levelling Up Secretary is expected to compare the country to “a football team trying to score a goal but with only a couple of players allowed to touch the ball”.

She will say that “growth is our only way out of this malaise” but argue that “we are trying to power a modern economy using just a handful of people, in a handful of sectors, in one small corner of the country” and that “the only route to growth is to back all people and all places and to get Britain firing on all cylinders”.

The Shadow Levelling Up Secretary will outline plans to allow local communities to take ownership of assets such as high street shops, pubs and football club with local people having the right of first refusal when such assets are up for sale.

Currently, communities can nominate buildings or land for listing by the local authority as an ‘asset of community value’ under the Localism Act 2011 where that asset’s principal use is deemed to further their community’s social wellbeing or social interests and is likely to do so in the future.

A moratorium on the sale of the asset of up to six months may be invoked but the community only has a right to bid alongside others. Labour has said that it would introduce a community ‘right to buy’ power of a right to first refusal. The party has also said it would extend the moratorium to 12 months.

Nandy will say that her party will build on the Community Ownership Fund and extend the period in which local groups are given to raise funds. She is also expected to signal that Labour will reform compulsory purchase powers – enabling councils and development corporations to purchase land at existing use value.

She will vow to end what she described as the “Hunger Games” model of devolution, which she will say sees each area go “cap-in-hand to Whitehall, competing for the ear of a junior minister who has never even set foot in their community for a small pot of money that comes with strings attached”.

She is expected to promise that the party’s “doors and minds will be open” and that Labour will “equip you with the powers that are right for your area” so that communities “no longer live or die at the whim of a Tory leader who promises to level up one day and then openly admits to moving money out of deprived areas the next”.

Rishi Sunak was criticised after a video emerged of the then leadership candidate explaining that he had changed funding formulas to direct money towards “areas like this are getting that they deserve” because Labour had “shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas”. He was speaking from Royal Tunbridge Wells.