It’s election time again, with one week to go until Southampton goes to the polls. You may have received your ballot papers already, if you vote by post. This time around, we’ll be choosing who we want representing us on our City Council.
It’s an important choice, and one that should be carefully considered, but it is a choice that I believe should always be made. The opportunity to vote is a fundamental human right and one that has been hard fought for by many. Decisions made by politicians have an enormous impact on our lives, whether taken at a national level – by the Government and by MPs – or at a local level, by councillors and the local Executive.
For the first time in a very long time, we have a Labour Council in Southampton working hand-in-hand with a Labour Government in Westminster. The benefits of this partnership cannot be overstated and, for the first time since 2010 – when Conservative and Lib Dem austerity took a wrecking ball to city coffers – we are seeing local authorities receive funding based on local need. With Labour, money allocated to councils is tied to local levels of deprivation, rather than favouring a particular political stripe, as we suffered previously.
As such, Southampton has this year seen an £84 million funding boost from Government, which is helping our city make meaningful investments in our local services again for the first time in years. To put this figure into context, the last comparable budget increase given to Southampton by the previous Conservative Government was just £6.9 million. As he proudly said himself, Rishi Sunak ‘took money out of deprived urban areas’, funnelling it instead into well-healed neighbourhoods like Tunbridge Wells. As a councillor in Southampton at the time, I saw first hand the very real cost of this policy, and the impact it had on the services we all rely on.
Thankfully, Labour doesn’t work like that. The new Government worked quickly to put right this wrong and we are beginning to see the first green shoots of change in Southampton as a result. With this new funding from Government comes previously unheard-of possibilities of the Council able to put new money into local services, as opposed to always having to choose the least-worst option on the table. As a result, our Labour Council is investing in our youth services, our roads and pavements, and into enforcement of fly-tipping and anti-social behaviour, amongst many other things, in a way that has been impossible for 14 long years.
Alongside this core funding boost, we’ve also seen huge investment pumped into our most left behind neighbourhoods. With everything from free breakfast clubs opening in our local schools, to a new Urgent Treatment Centre at the Hospital, to more money for buses, funds for local arts organisations, to much needed investment in our creaking roads and bridges. £20 million each is being given to the residents of Redbridge and the Millbrook Estate here in the West, and Weston over in the East, to be spent by the community, for the community. Brilliant to see these projects take a big step forward last week, with Neighbourhood Board Chairs appointed, and the process of recruiting the Board itself commencing – applications are open now!
But, all this progress is at risk. With Reform surging in the polls, we will need to do everything we can to protect the upward trajectory we have been taking locally, and to keep Southampton moving forward.
Now is the time for the Labour Council, who carefully steered the ship through the worst years of Tory government cuts, to truly supercharge their positive vision for our city.