With the Isle of Wight council elections less than a year away, OnTheWight asked leaders of all the political groups within the council for their “view on how things have been since the last election and your hopes for the next 11 months”.
The first to respond to our invitation to take part in this series was Labour councillor for Newport East, Geoff Lumley. Ed
Some OnTheWight readers will recall my summary of the first six months of this Council – Then I welcomed the IW Independent administration and thought they had done well in their honeymoon period.
After enduring the previous eight years of Tory rule – falling school standards, the Highways PFI deception, vulnerable children not safeguarded, healthy Council reserves frittered away on vanity projects (remember ‘One Million Blooms’?), etc. – my Labour colleague and I were prepared to be a ‘critical friends’ to an administration who seemed to share many of our values.
After the honeymoon, things went reasonably well for another year. Our budget proposals were listened to and we had real influence on policy. Unfortunately things went sour in the latter half of 2014.
Firstly the administration lost four members, who had their own personal ambitions, and thus any semblance of a majority.
School consultation
Then the leadership listened to Hants officers and embarked on a deeply unsettling and flawed consultation over secondary school places.
They lost Labour’s support during this period and by the time the decision was made to keep all our secondary schools open and we were ‘friends’ again, the wolves were at the door.
Over £50m of cuts from Government
The wolves, being the election of a majority Conservative government in May 2015, committed to even more savaging of our public services in the name of austerity, much of it at the expense of local government.
We all know by now that £50m has been taken out of local services since 2011 and that a further £35m is to come out of a net spend of £123m over the next four years.
A balanced budget was set in February, but the prospects for a year-end balance and then 2017-18 are bleak. Labour councillors have supported both the Unite the Isle of Wight anti-austerity campaign group and the ‘Fight for the Wight’ petition to government.
Will the Gov deliver their promise?
Whether the Island will get the special treatment it seeks from government, in recognition of its unique status, remains to be seen. We certainly hope so. What is certain is that the next Council elections will be contested against a backcloth of continued austerity in public services.
The local Conservatives are dogmatically committed to austerity, along with their UKIP and ‘other independent’ allies.
Campaigning against ‘austerity’
Labour is a party, both locally and nationally, now committed (thankfully) to opposing ongoing austerity. The IW Independent administration is also broadly anti-austerity, having signed up to ‘Councillors Against Austerity’.
Voters next May will have a very clear choice over what they want at County Hall in the following four years. A Council either against or in favour of austerity. Whether we will still have a real Council though could be another matter.
Geoff Lumley IW Councillor for Newport East (formerly Pan) since 2005 and lead Labour member
