Political Viewpoint - Leigh-on-Sea

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Leigh On Sea News: Political Viewpoint – By Labour Councillor Daniel Cowan, Leader Of Southend City Council. Ambitious For Our City!

Political Viewpoint – By Labour Councillor Daniel Cowan, Leader Of Southend City Council. Ambitious For Our City!

By Labour Councillor Daniel Cowan, Leader Of Southend City Council.

Ambitious For Our City!

I’d love to talk about how this joint administration’s first year has been spent undoing the damage caused by the last Tory administration, led by the now Leader of Reform, how they destroyed services, cut their funding, and reduced service standards leading to the very issues that residents send into my inbox every day, but I know that people just want to see change.

Residents are bored of hearing about the mess we inherited. I think most understand we’ve been dealt a bad hand but what they want to hear about is what we’re doing to fix it.

Yes, the Tories failed to provide the secure homes that people need, but what are we doing to fix the housing crisis?

It’s true that the Tories and Reform underinvested in our roads, leaving potholes everywhere, and voted against greater investment, but what is this administration doing to get our roads up to scratch?

People know the Tories, led by the now Leader of Reform, made the choice to change bin collections to once a fortnight, but now they’re asking what is our plan to keep Southend clean?

We’ve done a lot, and we’ve got the ambition and the plans to do so much more. We’ve just started the new budget year and this is our budget, designed to deliver on our priorities. We did as much as we could with the budget we inherited, but it wasn’t enough to make the bigger changes people want to see.

On housing, we are leading the way on delivering the homes that local people need. We’ve reignited Better Queensway, we’ve opened new homes in Shoeburyness, we’re developing plans for eco-friendly council homes near Tesco Extra, we’ve signed the agreement that provides housing on Fossetts Farm and secures the future of Southend United, and we’re taking positive steps towards unlocking sites like Marine Plaza.

We’re not just delivering homes ourselves, we’re holding developers to account over sites they’ve left unbuilt, we’re opposing unsuitable sites like Hadleigh Salvation Army, and we’re demanding that Southend gets the infrastructure it needs before other large sites are progressed.

We see our political opponents – comfortable in their own secure housing – trying to whip up fear and concern about new housing. Opposing for the sake of opposing. We’re taking the grown-up approach of doing what is right, not simply what is politically convenient. People need homes. People need infrastructure too. We’re fighting for that.

On roads, we know that Southend needs to spend £6m a year just to keep the roads in their current condition. The last administration wanted to spend £4m – that would have led to massive deterioration. I promised that under my leadership, Southend would invest £10m in our roads and pavements. I did not deliver on that promise. Under my leadership, Southend will not be investing £10m into our roads and pavements this year. We’ll be investing £13m!

We now have a 5-year programme of investment, delivering the better roads and pavements that people need. They won’t all be fixed overnight, but we have a clear, funded plan to do what administrations past have failed to do – fix our roads and pavements.

We’re getting to grips with the waste contract. We’re doing the hard work of ensuring that the transition to fortnightly collections and wheelie bins that we inherited actually works for Southend. We’re holding the new contractor to a high standard and still ensuring that the previous contractor is held to account for their performance.

We are fulfilling a key election pledge in introducing a free bulky waste collection service alongside the new waste collection contract which starts in October. We’ve also created a new environmental crime team to crack down on fly-tippers. We are taking action.

We’re taking action to tackle the issues we know residents are concerned about. We know there are no quick fixes but that’s been the problem with politics for so long. Politicians have spent too many years looking for the headlines and the temporary swell of support around a policy announcement that never actually gets delivered.

We know that proper politics is about getting stuff done, not simply spouting populist lines, waving banners, and jumping on bandwagons. It’s about taking the hard decisions, making plans, and seeing those plans through. That is what we are doing.

This joint administration is ambitious for our city. We’re ambitious to develop our economy, provide better homes, make our city safer, improve social care and children’s services, plant more trees, and bring pride back to our city.

That’s why we’re also working hard to attract new businesses to Southend, to negotiate an extension of the Elizabeth Line to Southend, and to develop plans to regenerate our High Street.

We also want to take our record-breaking tree planting even further, take our tourism and events plans even further, and ensure that we’re doing the work that will reap long-term benefits not just short-term headlines.

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