ELECTION SPECIAL - 'Now the real work begins' - Labour wins comfortably in Swindon
Reflecting the national trend the Tories continue their downward trajectory at the borough council elections
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Painting the town red
Just 31% of the electorate turned out to vote in the local council elections when they went to the polls yesterday, but despite this deplorably low turnout, it was good news for Labour who have upped their borough council majority. But for them, having had a year already as the governing party, the honeymoon is over and now the real work begins. Jamie Hill has put together a list of the priorities that the Labour administration led by leader Jim Robbins should now concentrate on.
By Jamie Hill
It was a strange old election this year in Swindon.
Unless you’ve had your letterbox nailed shut and have spent the last couple of months hiding under a rock, it’s been hard to ignore.
Leaflets of every political persuasion have been pouring onto our doormats with increased regularity and posters have been everywhere.
This has all been going on whilst at the same time there’s been a constant buzzing in the background of our daily lives.
A constant white noise as the current national Tory Government continues its death rattle - a tailspin of a Conservative-controlled Parliament until Prime Minister Rishi Sunak finally gives up the ghost and lets us all out of our misery when he calls a General Election.
So these borough council elections have been held in the shadow of a General Election, which some believe could be held as early as July on the back of today’s shocking local election results for the Tory Party nationally, but is still most likely to be held in the back end of the year in the hope that by some miracle The Conservatives can somehow increase their standing in the polls.
Turnouts for local elections in Swindon have always been low, but this year’s at 31% has been shockingly low, especially if you compare it to the 35% of just last year.
That means 69% of us didn’t think it was worthwhile enough to make our voices heard by the simple act of putting a cross in a box.
But for Swindon’s Labour Party, it’s definitely been a day of celebration as they not only held onto their majority but increased it significantly having gained nine more seats from The Conservatives.
That is a huge gain for Labour.
It means the make-up of the council, which is made up of 57 seats, is now -
Labour - 41 (+9)
Conservative - 15 (-9)
Liberal Democrats - 1
To get the results in full click here
So what now?
Well, for Jim Robbins’ Labour administration it’s time to put their money where their mouth is.
For the past year, since they first took control of the council, they’ve been able to ride on the coattails of the ‘being new’ honeymoon period and have been able to blame the previous Conservative administration for leaving a mess for them to clear up.
According to a good few people, the new Labour administration, so far, has been quite impressive by showing a willingness to be open and transparent when it comes to the issues facing the town.
This is something the previous administration definitely lacked.
Whether this continues now that the ball is firmly in their own court (without the ability to claim that they’ve been hamstrung by both Conservatives locally and nationally), only time will tell.
This is the last election where only a third of the councillors will be on the ballot as there won’t be an election next year and then in 2026 we will be seeing every single councillor at once at the polling booth as full council elections are being introduced.
That means that Labour, with their comfortable majority, will have a full two years before we get a chance to vote again. Two years to hopefully get things right.
Here’s a list of things that should definitely be on the council’s priority list…
The Budget
This is one area where the Labour administration can definitely claim that they’re still hamstrung by the national Conservative Party having faced a real-time funding cut from Central Government of 40% over the last 14 years. Balancing the books has never been harder and with statutory duties taking up more than 80% of the budget, it leaves them with hardly any wriggle room when it comes to spare money.
With some deft accounting moves by the man in charge of the purse, Kevin Small, SBC’s cabinet member for finance, the council was able to announce back in October that although things are tight Swindon Borough Council wouldn’t be issuing a Section 114 Notice and wouldn’t be going bankrupt unlike other local authorities up and down the country, but by the end of the last financial year (23/24) there was going to be an overspend of £10m, with the council facing a shortfall of around £27m by the end of this financial year. Those figures are from October 2023 so they might have been improved upon since. But it doesn’t leave Swindon in the greatest position as we’re definitely not a cash-rich town.
Going forward, we’re going to have to see even more deft accounting from the financial bigwigs at the council. Whether the funding situation from Central Government will change after a General Election is also something that we’ll have to wait and see and I expect that Kevin Small himself is crossing his fingers and hoping that it falls in Swindon’s favour and that the taps will be turned on once again after such a long period of austerity.
When Prime Minister Rishi Sunak visited Swindon a couple of months ago, he had a bit of a dig against Swindon Borough Council’s budget after we saw our council tax rise once again by 5%. This came after Labour leader Keir Starmer had wrongly pledged that council taxes would no longer rise by the full amount under Labour. Although Rishi was right to make that claim that Labour had gone back on its word, the dig was slightly disingenuous by our Prime Minister as it was his own Government and him, himself, in his previous role as Chancellor, that created the current horrendous funding situation for local authorities meaning there has been very little choice for councils to not increase council tax by anything but the full amount to keep up with their statutory duties. It’s a situation caused by him and his Government in the first place.
In reality, we will continue to see our council taxes rise by 5% year-on-year until our economy is on a more stable footing on a national level.
In the meantime, Labour’s Swindon administration has to show that they are responsible when it comes to our money and act more as a facilitator for private enterprise and other organisations to make our local economy more buoyant.
It will be a hard balancing act and one that is bound to carry with it a fair few peaks and troughs.
Children’s Services
Back in September Swindon’s newly installed Labour administration were hit with some shocking news after Ofsted branded Children's Services in Swindon as Inadequate overall.
Throughout the report, inspectors acknowledged and praised the skill and dedication of social workers, support workers and other frontline personnel, but the overall picture was grim.
The report said: "...the service provided by Swindon Borough Council to children has deteriorated. There has been a lack of sufficient oversight, support and challenge at all levels of the local authority, from frontline managers through to senior and corporate managers and political leaders."
And perhaps most simple and damning of all: "The needs of vulnerable children have not been at the centre of corporate planning in Swindon."
It was a damning report and one that Council Leader Jim Robbins was very quick to respond to with an emergency improvement plan launched to try and get things up to scratch.
At the time he said: “Work is already underway to strengthen services. An improvement plan is already in place, and this was communicated to Ofsted as part of the review.
"Accelerating these improvements is the highest priority that we have at the council. We've got many talented, hard-working staff who are determined to do their best for children in the town.”
Although it can be argued that this was a problem that was inherited from the previous administration, the verdict is not yet in as to whether the borough council has been able to turn this situation around, and all eyes are still on them in the hope that they will.
On top of this, the council has been hit with criticism when it comes to SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disability) provision in Swindon with a whole swathe of problems being reported in that area from inadequate transport provision, to long waiting lists, sometimes for years, for Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) and poor communication with families.
All of these things will need to improve as they are now firmly under Labour’s watch.
The Oasis Leisure Centre
The ongoing saga of The Oasis is definitely at the forefront of a lot of people’s minds in Swindon.
Having not reopened after the pandemic in late 2020, Swindon’s flagship leisure centre has been a bone of contention for both the previous administration and the current administration.
Plans were revealed at the tail-end of last year with the Labour administration having come up with a deal with owners SevenCapital.
But we’ve still not seen any detailed planning applications released.
And with a vocal campaign group, Save Oasis Swindon, saying that they now won’t accept anything without a sports hall attached, it’s a bit of a tightrope walk for the council to try and engineer a solution that keeps the landlords happy with their needs for the whole thing to be viable as well as the populace happy with what they want for the site.
Push too much one way and the whole plan might just collapse and we’re left with nothing but go too much the other way and face the wrath of the people.
Incidentally, during this election, the campaign group itself showed that it had the memory of a goldfish by campaigning against Labour in favour of the Conservatives on their social media, somehow forgetting that the whole mess was created under the watchful eye of The Tories in the first place and that they had had years to come up with a solution, but hadn’t.
A very difficult issue for the current administration to deal with but for the sake of Swindon we do hope they prevail.
The Town Centre
Swindon has suffered from the doughnut effect for years.
Large swathes of housing have been built all around the town creating a hole in the centre of Swindon where the centre has been left to deteriorate with very little investment.
If you talk to anyone about Swindon the one thing they always mention is the dilapidated town centre.
It looks especially bad when you look at all of our surrounding towns and cities and see that they have all had the necessary investment to ensure that the heart hasn’t gone out of their centres, from Bristol and Reading to Gloucester and Cheltenham.
There are things happening in the centre including the now controversial bus boulevard which has been beset by delay after delay.
But what the town centre has needed for years is a council with vision to come along and really get stuck in to deal with the problems holistically.
Earlier this year the council carried out a ‘Big Conversation’ where they had a mass consultation to look at issues such as the town centre.
Swindon now needs a council that will stick the landing and get those cranes on the horizon to shape the town centre for generations to come.
Whether it’s less retail orientated with a smaller footprint and a mix of residential, leisure, and hospitality, whatever happens it’s got to be better than what we have now.
As a town, we need this and it’s now up to Labour to come up with the answers.
At the same time we need the council to find answers or to facilitate solutions to other problem buildings in the town like The Mechanics’ Institute.
Heritage should definitely be part of the mix with any plans.
Housing and planning
There’s a definite housing shortage in Swindon.
But at the same time, houses and estates are being built here all the time.
So it seems a bit paradoxical.
The problem is created because not enough affordable housing is being created at the same time.
And that is why the Labour administration of Swindon Borough Council’s recent approval of a masterplan that will see the largest social housing programme for the past 30 years taking shape in Swindon, is so welcome.
It’s a huge step in the right direction. But it is only a step and we need many more steps to come.
The Marlowe Avenue Masterplan will see the borough council and Swindon Rugby Club work together to build 1,100 houses on the site south of Greenbridge Road, with 450 houses and flats being socially rented council properties.
But this number of 450 new social housing properties seems so small when compared to the current number of 7,000 people on the social housing waiting list in the borough.
So we need more of this. Much more.
It’s all well and good creating more and more well-to-do estates but it doesn’t actually answer the populace’s housing needs.
In fact, it creates more problems. As the more and more estates like this that are built the more and more Swindon becomes a dormitory town.
Especially without addressing the doughnut hole-sized problem of the town centre, meaning people are likely to leave Swindon for the nicer environs of other centres rather than shop locally and helping their own town’s economy.
Waste and Recycling
The rollout of the biggest changes to Swindon’s waste and recycling services just before Christmas really couldn’t have gone much worse for the borough council, with entire routes being missed and rubbish piling up in the streets during the holidays.
Things didn’t right themselves until mid January.
At the time they blamed the fact that it had been the previous administration that had been the brains and organised the project and lots of mistakes were made, but it still fell squarely on the current administration’s shoulders that they didn’t foresee some of the issues that were created.
At the time Cllr Chris Watts, the cabinet member for the environment and transport, put his hands up and admitted the mistakes and then worked non-stop to get them sorted.
So far this year, it’s all calmed down again, but the council will have to ensure that they are on top of any issues as far as collections are concerned as it really is up to them to get it right now.
In Summary
Swindon Borough Council won’t have an easy time of it over the next few years, especially as money and under-resourcing is still a massive factor.
But the one thing that the people of the town would like to see is a transparent, pro-active council who listen and who aren’t afraid to get things done.
Let’s hope the now much larger Labour administration is up for the challenge.
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