You only need to take a trip to the Town Centre to see that Swindon is in urgent need of regeneration. The Tory Council has failed to regenerate the Town Centre.  They have had 8 years in power in Swindon and yet our Town Centre is still scarred by wasteland, derelict buildings, and eyesores.  The old College site with its broken windows is the most visual reminder of the Tory failure on regeneration. Promised regeneration projects have failed to be delivered. 

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Councillor Jenny Millin died earlier this week. Councillor Millin had been the councillor for the Moredon Ward since November 2010. She won her seat through a by-election.

The Leader of the Labour Group, Councillor Jim Grant, said:

“It is with great sadness that we have to announce the death of Councillor Jenny Millin. Our thoughts are with her family at this very sad time.

Since she came on to the Council back in November 2010, Jenny had been a breath of fresh air, working hard for the people she represented in Moredon and speaking passionately about matters affecting the most vulnerable people in our town . In the space of a year, her hard work was rewarded through having her surname used as a name for a recently built pathway which local residents requested and I appointed her as Labour’s Lead for Health & Social Care.

I can say with confidence that Councillor Millin will be greatly missed by her Councillor colleagues and even more by her constituents, who I know valued the hard work she put in to make the Moredon area a better place.”

Last week the Swindon Advertiser covered a public meeting where an estimated 150 Old Town residents attended an open meeting to discuss how to fight Swindon’s Conservative Councillors against their decision to propose a school on the Croft site and the granting of planning permission for the school to be sited at Croft.

I  have no doubt that the Conservatives will see those who attended this meeting as merely nimbys and self-interested. After speaking to some of those residents who attended this meeting, I hold a very different view and believe the large turnout highlights a recurring theme of the actions and decisions Swindon’s Conservative administration has taken.

• We saw it with the way this Conservative administration dismissed residents’ concerns over the administration’s Wi-Fi decision
• We saw it with the Whalebridge changes where the Conservative administration decided to make a massive change to the town’s road network without consulting one member of the public or ward councillor
• And we saw it with the allocation of the Haydon 3 S106 money, where Haydon Wick and Abbey Meads’ residents were bypassed in order for the Conservative administration to divert 83% of the £15m pot to other areas of Swindon

Swindon’s Conservative administration is neither listening to, nor working with the people of our town.  While providing warm words about engaging with local communities and residents, the Tories’ actions speak louder than their words and over the last 9 years of them being in administration, their actions have irreversibly alienated many of Swindon’s communities and residents.

The local Labour Party have recognised this and we believe we have a package of policies that will begin to recover local communities’ and residents’ trust in Swindon Borough Council, after nearly a decade of neglect. These policies would include:

•  Seeking to devolve more powers and services down to a lower tier of local government- parish and community councils.
• And we would get the Council to agree a set of rights that each resident in this town will have when interacting with their council. These rights should be proposed by an independent local resident after they hold an Independent Review where they consult with local residents about what they want from their council.

Should Labour take control of Swindon Council and I become Leader of the Council, gone will be the days where members of the public are targets of scorn from senior Conservative Councillors; gone will be the days where there are proposals to restrict the powers of parish councils and gone will be the days where decisions that affect all residents of the borough are nodded through without any public consultation.

Rachel Reeves, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, talked to Swindon Labour Party members in Broadgreen last night following an afternoon meeting with representatives of business and local Councillors.

Rachel emphasised how important Swindon was for the economy – and how much she was looking forward to Labour retaking the Council in May 2012, and the two parliamentary seats in May 2015.   She focused on economic issues – in a week when new figures showed we were on the cusp of another recession, when debt had passed £1trillion, when youth unemployment had passed  26% and had doubled in Swindon in the past year.  Borrowing was a staggering £158 billion more than the Tories had planned.  And why?  Well they blamed it last year on snow and the royal wedding; now they blame it on the Eurozone – but its their own blinkered ideology which places cuts to pensions, to small businesses and to famility policies before creating jobs and creating wealth.   She explained Labour’s 5 point plan for jobs and growth, and how well it had been received by business representatives she’d met in Swindon. Politics was about choices – the Tories had chosen to protect their friends the bankers and preserve their bonuses.  Labour had chosen to target jobs and growth.

Questions focused on the disastrous state of the health service, tax evasion by big business, why the finance sector had been preferred to productive industry, and why bonuses and greed couldn’t be controlled by the Tories or Lib Dems.   The audience were left full of questions about the failure of the current Government and wishing Rachel well in her new and demanding role.

Caption: Rachel Reeves and Jim Grant (Labour Group Leader) (Courtesy of O’Brian Media)

The Labour Group Leader, Councillor Jim Grant, has called for a halt to the Croft Development until local residents’ concerns about the process of the school being granted have been heard.

The Labour Group Leader has also written to the Leader of the Council, Councillor Rod Bluh, requesting that he join him in meeting leaders of the Croft Community who have expressed their concerns about the proposed new Old Town School.

I am calling for a temporary halt to the development of the Croft School, based on the evidence the Croft residents have provided to me. The reason I am doing this is because the Croft residents have shown me evidence that undermines the robustness of the information that has been provided to justify the school being on the Croft site.

As well as this, I think local residents’ have been isolated from the Croft School process because they were legitimately concerned about a new school being on that site and that has meant the Croft community now feel completely alienated from Swindon Borough Council. This cannot be right and undermines one of the Council’s strategic aims- to better engage with its local communities.

If I have been given the correct information then reconsideration of the Croft School and a temporary halt to development is the minimum that is required. Following this I think the Leader of the Council and I need to meet with the leaders of the Croft community to listen and review their case.

Below is a letter to Councillor Bluh to ask him to join me in doing this. Anything other than him doing this will be a kick in the teeth for the Croft and wider Old Town community.

Cllr Jim Grant, Swindon Labour Group Leader

Labour Leader’s Letter to the Leader of the Swindon Council

 Dear Rod

I write to you as a matter of serious urgency regarding the proposed new primary school at Croft. Whilst we are political opponents I believe we have some things in common and this includes wanting good trusting relationships with Swindon’s communities.  Recently there has been a break down in trust with the Croft Community over theCroftSchoolproposal.

Originally I thought this was about the proposed school at Croft and the subsequent planning decision, however it is much deeper than that and I believe it undermines the ‘Stronger Together’ principles.

I recently met some of the Croft Community and the information they relayed causes me great concern. They feel an injustice has been done on the back of what they feel is incorrect and incomplete information that has been supplied to council members to make decisions.  Based on what they have told me it may contribute to an unsafe decision and I would be happy to talk to you about this in person.

Since the Planning Committee Meeting they have also been told that information presented to the committee can’t be challenged. In other words, there is no recourse for local residents’ on planning decisions. I am not comfortable with this and the residents have judged the Council by its acts and to them the Council has used all the resources at its disposal to ensure the building of a school at Croft, without thinking about alternative arrangements.

That is why I am callin g on you to temporarily halt the building of the proposed primary school at Croft. During this time I propose that me and you, as the town’s main political group leaders, meet with the leaders of the Croft community and review their case. This should not be a long process as all the information regarding this is in the public domain and this could have significant implications in signalling toSwindon’s communities that their council will hear them out.

I look forward to a prompt response from you.

Yours Sincerely,

Cllr Jim Grant

Swindon Labour Group Leader

Anyone who has looked at the budget proposals by the current “caring” council can’t fail to notice that it hits  the education, and I would suggest the welfare, of the most vulnerable children in Swindon.

Eight out of the twenty proposals listed on the budget proposal web page of Swindon Borough Council are educationally based and are targeted at those with either emotional or educational difficulties.  For example:

Review of supported living for those with learning disabilities
and
Review of Learning Disability care packages

These two reviews could potentially save £563,000 according to the figure it is either going to set out.

Even with the best case scenario coming from the review this is going to do one of two things.

1. Remove completely the service from any number of current clients .
2. Set the service on a course that will inevitably lead to the closure.

I say this because it doesn’t take a genius to see that taking this much funding out of any facility can do nothing but damage the infrastructure.

I can hear response from my living room:  So Where Would You Make the Cuts?

This may not be the most popular solution but I suggest that this Council look at themselves to find the answers.  For the past 10 years they have blamed the previous labour Council for the cuts, failing services etc.  At no time have they taken any responsibility for problems of their own making.

Four of the senior members of council cabinet are accountants, yet none of them saw the problems of giving a £400,000 wi-fi project to a company with no experience in the field. On top of that they failed to notice that despite the fact that the company had received over half of the total funding there was no progress at all.

Finally, whilst the company was in the throes of bankruptcy they rubber stamped a further £200,000 payment.

This is just one case where there appears to be a problem that is nothing to do with the previous labour administration. I am not privy to all of the transactions made by this administration over the past ten years but I would ask how many more of these amazing failures might one find if we looked a little closer?

Mass unemployment destroys the social morale of communities and forcing young people who have completed their training for work to remain idle is Tory politics of the vilest nature. It leads to disillusionment and rings true of Thatcher’s “laissez faire” leave it to the market approach. In Swindon young people need know that Tory policies are not working for them and only Labour has new ideas to tackle youth unemployment.

Labour’s solution to Osborne’s failed plan A and Cameron’s Tory laissez faire attitude to young people will be to tax bankers bonuses and create 100,000 jobs for young people.

People still fear for their job security as redundancies climb. The Office of National Statistics reports that there were 164,000 redundancies in September to November 2011, up 14,000 on the previous quarter and 5,000 on the year. When will Osborne ditch his plan A and accept that it isn’t working?

On Tuesday 3rd January 2012 sometime after 09.00 I received the following information about the housing ballot result:

• 72.3 per cent voted against
• 27.7 per cent in favour.
• The turnout was 65.6 per cent, which compares well with votes in other similar-sized authorities.

The information contained within those 3 short lines, hides a long and complex story full of intrigue, excitement and balderdash. The unprecedented high turn out by tenants and their convincing NO vote will add to the mounting and increasingly obvious demoralisation of the uneasy pact that existed between Tory and LibDem councillors. They were warned that it was unwise to waste pots of council taxpayers cash on a ballot that tenants did not want. They just carried on regardless without heed, intent on hammering through the council’s preferred position to sell off the council’s housing. Tories and LibDem councillors queued up to jump onto the board of the Shadow Housing Board in particular Cllrs Mavis Child, Andy Harrison, David Renard and Brian Mattock who was appointed chair.

This preferred position was in Labour’s view not the best option for the people living in the council’s homes. It would have seen the end of the secure tenancy. It did not give equal prominence to self financing of the housing stock. The Tory and LidDem councillors used all the resources at their disposal to kite their preferred position and in doing so have squandered over half a million pounds of Swindon council Tax Payers money. Yes despite losing the ballot Swindon council tax payers have to pay for it.

Tenants complained during the consultation period that they were being bombarded by pushy calls and visits prompting them to vote Yes to the council’s preferred position to become a housing association. Cllrs Russell Holland and Garry Perkins put a motion to council to deter free expression from councillors who did not support the Tory LibDem preferred position. I and other Labour councillors did not support the preferred position and believed that a council secure tenancy was the best way to protect our tenants homes and self financing was a better way to refurbish and improve council tenant’s homes. This position will now allow the council to start building houses and increase the number of houses to rent. It was shortsighted to turn over approx 18% of the houses in Swindon to a private company that was not accountable to the people of Swindon. Owning public sector housing is a strategic necessity as it ensure that private rents cannot easily escalate to levels far above what is affordable to ordinary working families.

As a member of the Labour party I would like to take this opportunity to thank Chris Watts, a fellow Labour party member, who gave up his time to operate a website and author material. Tenants ran their own No to Transfer campaign and many people helped them. It is those silent helpers that who turned out delivering leaflets and talking to tenants who should be thanked.

The tenants saw the preferred position for what it was their homes would be hocked to a banker for the next 30 years. They took the decision to make their homes theirs for life as per the rights granted to them by a council secure tenancy.

Swindon Borough Council has been accused by Swindon’s Labour Group Leader of letting down the town’s young children after proposing more than £150,000 worth of cuts to Swindon’s children’s centres. These cuts were part of the administration’s budget proposals back in November and will be on top of the £50K cut from Swindon’s Sure Start this year.

The Conservative administration’s proposals include making cuts of more than £40,000 to the Robert Le Kyng and the Penhill/Pinehurst Children’s Centres and cuts of more than £8.500 to Children’s centres in places like Freshbrook, Dorcan, Stratton and Drove Road.

These Tories proposed cuts to Swindon’s children centres will be a huge worry to families in places like Freshbrook, Dorcan, Eastcott and Penhill, whose children’s centres are receiving cuts.

SureStart is a universal service for our town’s young families and any cuts to this service are depriving families of this essential support they deserve.

Unlike Labour, who have created and defended the many excellent children’s centres across our town, the Tories do not prioritise young people.

As Labour councillors and representatives of this town, we will stand up for our children and fight this lack of investment in their future. It is a shame that the Tories both locally and nationally are not doing the same.

Tories Proposed Sure Start Cuts in 2012/13