22 April - Councillor's questions, otherwise known as electioneering
Councillor Ball (Labour, Erith) with the only half decent question of the evening, asked the Council Leader David Leaf to outline the
risks presented by a low asset base to the future capital investment programme.
Councillor Leaf said that the question made him feel like Christmas had come
early because he enjoys speaking about such things. He said that the way to
ensure the Capital Investment Programme was delivered in full was to vote Conservative on 7th May. (Was that really it?)
For reasons best known to himself, Councillor Ball accepted that non-answer,
instead he asked the Leader to agree that the Conservatives and LibDems
together, having sold off the housing stock at a knockdown price averaging
£8,000 per home we have missed out on having and owning an asset that would
now be worth more than £400 million. The income from rents and the capacity
to allocate decent homes would benefit Bexley’s most precious asset, its people.
The Leader said that Greenwich had around 20,000 Council homes, but they are
facing considerable financial pressures because they do not have the
resources to maintain them. Hit by regulations and red tape, it threatens
the financial sustainability of the Council.
“The Labour Party Manifesto is a work of fiction making as it does many
commitments to Social Housing but here in Bexley, the Labour Party has put
no resources into how to do that. The assumption behind the question is flawed
and the only way to ensure good quality housing in Bexley is to vote Conservative on 7th May.”
The Capital Programme is financing roads, libraries, recreation grounds,
community centres, Adult’s Social Care and Children’s Care all of which
Labour voted against - according to Councillor Leaf. The Green Party has not
managed to hypnotise budgets into being bigger and the cult of Nigel Farage is absolutely clueless.
Councillor Anna Day (Erith, Slade Green) asked David Leaf if he was as
pleased as she was at the Labour Governmen’s £20 million of Pride funding
in her ward. He said he had already answered that question in Public Cabinet
last week adding that overall, the Labour Government had cut millions of pounds of funding to Bexley.
Labour Councillors are not alone in asking questions which have little
purpose other than to puff up the claimed achievements of their party. Councillor
Rags Sandhu (Conservative, Bexleyheath) asked the Cabinet Member for
Place Shaping to congratulate everyone involved with the new Growth
Strategy. Another waste of time which benefits residents not one jot.
Cabinet Member Munur replied “Absolutely”. (Are such Councillors really worthy of your vote?)
Councillor Cameron Smith wasn’t much better. Would the Cabinet Member
say what he has done since 2022 to maintain Bexley’s roads. “Around 6,000
small adjustments and repairs are completed each year and over 9,900 pot
holes have been filled over the past four years. 339 separate locations have
been resurfaced or significantly patched. In the last year alone 132,000
square metres have been repaired which is about 17·5 kilometres which is about 2%
of the network. (Is that saying that the roads will take 50 years to fix?)
Councillor Smith (Conservative, St. Mary's & St. James) said that on the previous day the Government had published
new conditions for road grant funding. “Could the false narrative from our
Labour colleagues here and the MP for Bexleyheath and Crayford about our
roads see Bexley Council stripped of the money the Labour Group wants to celebrate?
Cabinet Member Diment said it was really disturbing that the tremendous work
done in this borough has been put at risk by the thoughtless intervention of
the MP who tried to convince the Prime Minister that we were not spending
the money allocated. “Quite honestly, highly dishonest of him. The reality
is that we spent every single penny and a little bit more”- The methodology
of the DfT showed Bexley to be in 7th place nationally.
Councillor Day spent the remaining minute of question time to ask Richard
Diment to thank the Labour Government and the MP for the funding and raising
the pot hole issue. Richard said he was grateful for any money received but
pointed out that the Labour Mayor has withheld his contribution for the past ten years. He,
being far more reticent than I would be, said nothing about the traitorous
MP. That man has proved to be a massive disappointment and should not survive another election.