Why should Southwark residents vote Liberal Democrat in the local elections? Transparency and communication would be high on the list, says leader Hamish McCallum.
Cllr McCallum, who represents the North Bermondsey ward and is contesting his first election as leader, said that effective consultation with residents would be a top priority for the Liberal Democrats if they managed to wrest control of Tooley Street from Labour for the first time in twelve years on May 5.
“It’s just an under-resourced area at the moment,” the barrister said. “There’s consultation and there’s consultation and it’s clear that Labour aren’t doing enough.”
Cllr McCallum said if the Liberal Democrats gained control of the council they would take on a “co-design” approach that would give residents greater say over the decision-making process. He cited a recent decision to introduce parking permits in north Bermondsey, which he said had little support from residents but went ahead anyway.
Labour has maintained that it always carries out effective consultation, although this does not always match up with many stories residents have told the News over the years of feeling that their voices are not being heard.
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Elsewhere, Cllr McCallum laid into Labour for its housebuilding efforts, dismissing the targets that Labour said it had reached. “166 homes built over four years is really not good enough,” he said. Asked if it was unfair to criticise Labour for not building enough homes as well as often opposing the council’s controversial ‘infill’ housebuilding programme, Cllr McCallum said he disagreed.
“It’s not that I am against infill per se,” he said. “We have to take it on a case-by-case basis, and always make sure we are listening to people and taking their views into account. But also, there’s plenty of places across the borough where the council could be building more.
“Look at the Old Kent Road – there’s lots of new blocks going up there. 20,000 homes – if more of those were affordable, that would make a big difference in the housing crisis.” Some 7,000 of the new homes along the Old Kent Road are set to be “affordable”, according to the council’s action plan for the area, including 5,000 homes for social rent.
Cllr McCallum also pointed to the high number of empty homes in the borough, and the council’s failure to use certain measures to bring empty private homes back into use since the last election. The Liberal Democrats said in 2018 that they would set up a dedicated taskforce to tackle empty homes. Cllr McCallum did not confirm that the party would do the same if they won control of the council this year, but said they would do more to bring empty homes into use than Labour is doing.
Southwark has 2,705 ‘long-term empty’ homes and has not used key levers like empty-dwelling management orders to take these over once since 2017. Labour has said that these measures are costly, time-consuming and complex, and that it is lobbying central government to give local authorities more, and simpler, powers to requisition empty private homes.
And discussing empty council homes, Cllr McCallum pointed to the 144-home Maydew House by Southwark Park, which has lain empty since 2015, as a “blot on the skyline”.
The new homes planned near the Old Kent Road that Cllr McCallum referred to need to be serviced by public transport in order to be feasible, but the Bakerloo Line Extension has been shelved indefinitely. The Liberal Democrats have long proposed a tram to serve the area in the meantime, and have included the plan in their manifesto for this year.
But when asked how the party would fund this tram, Cllr McCallum declined to go into detail, saying there would have to be discussions with Transport for (TfL) and other partners. This is an issue that has sometimes been levelled at Southwark’s main opposition party by their opponents: that they have plenty of ideas, but less detail on how they would pay for them.
Active travel is another key issue for all parties, with cycling a key concern for the Liberal Democrats. The party would add another 100 TfL bike docking stations in Southwark, mostly focusing on the south and the east of the borough, which are currently underserved by the scheme.
To put that into perspective, there are about 800 bike docking stations across the whole of London at the moment, meaning this change would take Southwark from being one of the inner London boroughs with the least docking stations to having some of the most.
Each docking station costs nearly £200,000, according to TfL – meaning the Liberal Democrats would be spending nearly £20 million on the bikes, although presumably much of this would be contributed by developers.
Asked exactly where the new bikes would go, Cllr McCallum said: “Again, this illustrates our approach – we would get into consultation and ask people where they wanted them to go.”
Lib Dem’s key pledges
• Fully divest Southwark’s pension fund from fossil fuels. End all direct or indirect investments in fossil fuels by 2025 and increase the fund’s allocation into clean energy organisations.
• A tram for Southwark. Put Southwark’s weight behind plans for a tram to connect the borough while we await the stalled Bakerloo line project.
• Bring council homes back into use. Expand and accelerate the council’s buyback scheme for council housing and bring empty homes back into use.
• Tackle fly tipping. Reintroduce free bulky waste disposal services and invest in enforcement officers to issue fines against fly tippers.
• Make consultation worth having. Introduce a consultation guarantee to ensure that local people have a real say in council decisions.
READ MORE
- Labour currently runs the council, what does their leader has to say? – Click here
- WATCH: We did a special Gogglebox-style coverage in the in the run-up to the election – click below to view what residents have to say
Southwark Elections 2022: What do the ordinary people of Southwark think?
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