20 August - Manifesto promises. “We delivered every commitment since 2006”
@tonyofsidcup with his FOIs has done a pretty good job of demonstrating that
Bexley Conservatives’ claim to have delivered
on all their 2018 Manifesto promises was pure bunkum.
The fact is that they failed to meet any of them.
One thousand trees were not planted in four years. It may have been 906 if you
count those planted in the year before the pledge and add in those planted by Network Rail. The town
centre wi-fi did not materialise and some schools continued to fall short of a Good or Outstanding OFSTED rating.
One might also ask what happened to the promised two hectares of new green space.
It is more difficult to check the rather far fetched claim that every promise since 2006 has been fulfilled (see below left) as I do not
have a copy of the 2006 Manifesto but I have tracked down
the one for 2010 and added it to
the archive of Election leaflets.
In it Council Leader Teresa O’Neill is critical of Labour’s 40% Council Tax
increase and then rather disingenuously basks in the glory of being able to use
that windfall to keep the following years’ increases below the rate of inflation. “We
will manage the situation calmly and continue to deliver high quality services
at a price we can all afford.” Failed on both counts!
Cancelling the Thames crossing was seen as a boon for Bexley and not the drag on its economy and contrary to
the wishes of local residents that proved to be the case.
The Conservatives
planned to spend £7 million with Siemens on modernising the
CCTV system and selling the monitoring service to neighbouring boroughs. That
never happened and Bexley has failed to the extent it has not even got the resources to monitor itself. The
promised Improved transport options in Bexleyheath proved to be illusory too. (Thanks to Crossrail at Abbey Wood we got the 301 bus,
the first to run a reasonably direct route into Bexleyheath from the North of the borough.
On the other hand some areas of Thamesmead lost their connection when the B11 was curtailed.)
There was a pledge in 2010 to improve the recycling rate to 55% but the best achieved during the following twelve years was 54·2%.
There was an unexplained implication (see below) that the Oaklands Car Park would somehow
become free. On the contrary, 24/7 parking charges were introduced across the major town centre car parks.
The 2010 Manifesto has always been on BiB but for reasons unknown omitted from the menus and therefore effectively inaccessible.