Sustainable Communities Act

Have just returned from the Council meeting at the Town Hall where I put the following question to the Leader of the Council:

"In light of the recent short consultation on the council's draft core strategy, is the council prepared to adopt the powers within the Sustainable Communities Act in order to promote local democracy and to give local people the opportunity to influence central government to assist the council in promoting the sustainability of local communities in Maidstone."

The question was met with unanimous support. In response to the question the Tory run administration announced that they will pursue the SCA with a view to putting recommendations to central government by the July 2009 deadline. The Lib Dems also supported the SCA and stated that they had been preparing a motion for a future council meeting and were at pains to claim that this was not as a result of my question!

For my supplementary question I could not help but to ask why it had taken so long to move on the ACT given that it came in in 2007...