Political Viewpoint

BY Coun Daniel Cowan, Leader of Southend City Council & Labour Councillor for St Laurence ward.

Leigh Port is about to see almost £22 million of investment as part of my administration’s ongoing commitment to regenerating our city, and making sure the next generation inherits something better than we did.

Leigh Port is a working harbour, part of Leigh’s history and character, supporting fishing, cockling, businesses and jobs. But let’s be honest – it’s seen better days and those better days are a distant memory for most. This site has been crying out for love and investment, and that is exactly what we are doing.

Almost £22 million is now going into the Port, planning permission has been secured, the main contract has been approved and the work will strengthen the quay, improve working areas and drainage and dredge the harbour.

I am proud that we made the decision to keep this project moving, but Leigh Port is part of a much bigger story about investment taking place across Southend.

At the Cliffs Pavilion, we have pushed ahead with a major refurbishment of one of the most important cultural venues in the East of England, improving the building and helping secure its future as a major attraction bringing hundreds of thousands of visitors into our city.

At the other end of the seafront, our administration has secured a new future for the Kursaal. We found a new leaseholder who is already restoring the building and, working together, have now secured another £540,000 from Historic England towards essential repairs to this incredible Southend landmark.

At East Beach, our new flagship accessible playground has just opened. It is somewhere children with different physical and additional needs can play together, but it is also part of a wider investment in parks and playgrounds right across Southend.

Better Queensway is moving too. The infrastructure work is happening now, preparing the area for new homes and public spaces, while our wider £100 million council housing programme is about directly tackling the shortage of good quality, genuinely affordable homes.

None of this happens by accident. It happens because my administration has chosen investment and regeneration as priorities, has been prepared to commit money when it is needed, and has kept pushing projects forward when problems have emerged. That is the political choice we have made: not to manage decline, but to invest in Southend’s future.

Since becoming Leader, I have tried to bring a simple approach to regeneration: be ambitious, be practical and keep pushing until things happen. Councils can produce strategies, drawings and business cases indefinitely. Residents quite reasonably judge us on whether anything actually changes.

Increasingly, as a Labour Leader, I also have the opportunity to work with a Labour Government that wants to invest.

Our local Labour MP for Southend West and Leigh is an important part of that relationship. David Burton-Sampson has made improving Southend Hospital one of his priorities and has repeatedly taken our case into Government.

We have now seen £1 million committed to develop the business case for replacing the ageing hospital tower block, and we’re hopeful ministers will soon set out major investment to tackle Southend Hospital’s long-standing structural estate problems.

That is what I want the relationship between Southend and Westminster to look like: local representatives identifying what our city needs, making the case relentlessly and then working with Government to turn that case into investment.

There is plenty more to do. Not every project moves as quickly as I would like, and anybody involved in regeneration knows that planning, procurement, funding and construction can be complicated. Projects hit obstacles and circumstances change.

Leadership is not pretending those obstacles do not exist. It is refusing to allow them to become an excuse for standing still.

That is particularly important when council finances are difficult. We have to make services more efficient and tackle the enormous pressures in social care, but we cannot cut our way to a stronger city. We need investment in homes, roads, transport, culture, public spaces and the places that make Southend distinctive.

For Leigh, that means respecting and protecting the character that makes it such a special place while still being confident enough to invest in its future.

Leigh Port captures that ambition perfectly: proud of our history, confident about what comes next and determined to turn plans into reality.

There is much more still to do, but that is the job – bringing investment into our city, solving the problems that get in the way and turning ambition into delivery. And we are getting on with it.

Picture: Coun Daniel Cowan, Leader of Southend City Council & Labour Councillor for St Laurence ward.

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