For the last four months Swindon Borough Council’s Core Strategy document has been out to public consultation. This document sets out the Council’s guiding principles for the town’s development over the next 20 years.

As Councillors from all the main political parties are in favour of continued growth in the town, there is much in this document that transcends party politics. However, there are certain aspects of the document where there are real differences in view between your Labour and Conservative Councillors.  That is why this week the Swindon Labour Party will be sending a response to the proposed Core Strategy document outlining our principles regarding development in the town.

The Labour Group’s guiding principles in relation to Swindon’s development over the next 15 years can be summarised within the 6 key principles below:

• Ensuring sustainable housing and economic growth- including attracting the jobs of the future to the town
• Building the right level of affordable housing to meet local needs
• Protecting our greenspaces and greenfields
• Regeneration within the town centre and other areas in the borough
• Establishing sustainable new communities & protecting existing ones
• Ensuring the right infrastructure is in place to meet the town’s transport needs

These 6 principles are what the Swindon Labour Party believes can ensure continued high employment in the town compared with other areas in the South-West and will ensure that Swindon is still a nice place to live.

To set a clear path for the future is not new to Swindon. Indeed, throughout Swindon’s history the town has renewed itself in order to ensure high employment and to make it a nice place to live.

Perhaps most recently this happened in the 1980’s with the closures of the railway works.  Then a Labour-controlled Swindon Council ensured the town was a nice place to live through such things as establishing the Link Centre and turned Swindon in to one of the fastest growing towns in Western Europe, by attracting companies like Honda, BMW, Nationwide and Intel.

Swindon needs this level of vision and delivery again over the next twenty years and that is what your current group of Labour Councillors are determined to bring.

Jim Grant, Labour Group Leader

I am delighted to been selected by Abbey Meads Labour Party to stand in the local elections on the 5^th May. I live in Oakhurst and work locally in Swindon. As  someone just starting a family I understand the worries of what the future is going to bring.

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At the Full Council meeting on 11th November, Cllr Des Moffatt and Cllr Derique Montaut moved and seconded the following:

“In light of the continued failure by Forward Swindon Limited and its predecessor organisation to deliver regeneration to any part of Swindon beyond that enabled by public sector funding, Council invites the Chief Executive to take a report to Cabinet outlining the effect of abolishing Forward Swindon Limited, with the duties in economic and regeneration being brought under the direct management of the Group Director of Environment, Regeneration and Community, reporting to a single politically balanced group without Executive Powers.  Council requests that the Chief Executive further reports details of what savings there are to be realised on the £1.2 million revenue funding from the public purse (for which SBC currently contributes £760K) of Forward Swindon Limited.”

Contrary to the local paper headline, the Labour Group does not seek to end regeneration.  This is what Des said in moving the motion.

Voting for this resolution is not as perceived, it is not voting to abolish Forward Swindon, it is asking for a root and branch review cutting through the hype and re-examining the value for money of the process in light of achievements by Forward Swindon and its predecessor’s efforts. We have had far too many written and verbal ‘artists impressions’ and no delivery.

It was Sue Bates and Mike Bowden who in 2002 set up the New Swindon Company and they did that to take advantage of the regeneration money available from the then Labour government, and there has been success in that with the help of the then Labour MPs.

That has now run its course it seems to me.  When we examine what has happened, apart from that funded from public purse there has been no private sector investment worth getting excited about.  That the College site design is better than nothing has been the argument used to the critics of detail of that design. The British Home stores redevelopment was opposed initially by the redevelopment company. Not everyone is convinced Juries Inn is of fundamental benefit to the Swindon economy and was probably very little to do with any regeneration initiative anyway.

I have made it my business to try and find out exactly what it is the regeneration company does and even though I probably know more than most outside of the inner circle of the administration with the exception of Cllr Nick Martin, I haven’t done very well in that. Did you know for example that Forward Swindon still doesn’t have a board even though the decision to set it up was approved by cabinet on the 10th of March.

Oh I am quite sure that Forward Swindon employees individually are diligent and capable people but as a team they have failed. Like Liverpool football club, changing the manager might not be enough, we have had changes of the chief executive, we may need to change the ownership as well.

I was quite surprised to learn just how much of the work one would think was the job of the regeneration people  is actually done by Swindon Council’s direct employees.  Planning, traffic impact, finance, property and much more remain the remit of Council officers.

We are saying that the time may be now to consider bringing the whole shamozzale back in house. After all we have missed out in the successor organisations to the Regional Development Agencies. Local Enterprise Partnerships, nothing is left for us.  Wiltshire and Gloucester, and their centres of population are our direct competitors it strikes me.  There is nothing new in being on our own.  We have always fallen between stools, the M4 corridor development or the South West.  In the past we have used this to our advantage by giving business direct access to our public service officers and we can again.

Contrary to the mantra of some, practical and genuine doers in commerce and industry want to talk to the leading civil servants of the area, and prefer to do that without amateurs like us getting in the way.   I include most of the front bench in that description. Our principle officers should talk to industry without us getting in the way.

What we must do in my opinion is focus on what’s best for Swindon, and to do that I believe we need to empower the people who work directly for Swindon Council and whose personal success is bound up in Swindon’s success and not dependant on the networking that can be achieved in the regeneration circuit.

Then there is the undoubted saving to the public purse, and in particular Swindon’s public purse, in bringing this activity back in house.  A visit to Bridge House would give members a taste of what is available, relative to, for example floor 3 in Watt Tyler House and new ways of working.

Cllr Des Moffatt

The news that Swindon Town Centre’s economy is in serious peril, is alarming but not surprising. The Tory Council have 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.

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