In the last of a series of pieces from the main political parties in the borough, Greenwich Council leader DENISE HYLAND outlines why her Labour group deserve your vote on Thursday.
Labour has achieved a great deal in Royal Greenwich: we have worked to protect the most vulnerable; supported schools – with our primary schools now some of the best in the country; enabled new transport connections, such as the DLR and Crossrail; improved access to jobs; been one of the highest performing London councils in providing new affordable homes; become a London Living Wage borough and brought our parks to life.
In 2017 the independent Fairness Commission set out recommendations for all to benefit from. We want to help people, residents, to get on in life, share in our prosperity and we have adopted all the recommendations.
Tory cuts impact on all of us but especially the elderly, the disabled and children. That is why we are going to protect our frontline services, as much as we can, from the worst effects of Government policies, for the benefit of all residents, particularly our most vulnerable.
We are seeing cuts to the NHS and the Metropolitan Police by this Tory government and only a Labour council will be effective in challenging such austerity measures, in order to ensure the best services for our residents. That is why we will actively explore with NHS partners a way to ensure that our local accident and emergency department is fit for purpose.
We are ambitious
Many schools will be losing funding and may be forced to make staff redundant to balance their budgets. We want all our children to get the best start in life. We give full support to our schools and are ambitious for all our children to reach their full potential.
We need to ensure that we are making a real difference to enhancing the environment and improving air quality. We are taking action now – increasing the use of green energy, introducing Low Emission Neighbourhoods, incentivising people to get out of their cars and use public transport, walking or cycling. We are pledging to plant 2,022 trees between now and 2022.
We are determined to build homes for local people and offer genuinely affordable social rents.
We believe in co-operatives and will do what we can to support them, and to this end many of us are standing as Labour & Co-operative candidates.
Labour is ambitious for Greenwich, proud of our achievements but conscious that we have a big agenda to ensure we are a more equal, more skilled, healthier, greener and wealthier borough “for the many, not the few”.
We have five key pledges:
- Actively explore, with the NHS, the creation of a new Health Campus at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, to improve patient facilities (rebuilding A&E) so they are fit for purpose
- Work with the Mayor of London to protect local policing from Government cuts
- Train more childminders and work to encourage the expansion and availability of excellent and affordable nursery places
- Improve air quality and maintain the largest network of monitoring stations in the capital
- Fight for the powers and resources we need to start building more council housing
For the full manifesto please go to greenwichlabour.org/manifesto.
Please use all three of your votes to return a Labour council on May 3rd.
Denise Hyland is Labour and Co-operative candidate for Abbey Wood. To find out more, visit greenwichlabour.org.
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‘Why you should vote Green in Greenwich on 3 May’
‘Why you should vote Conservative in Greenwich on 3 May’
‘Why you should vote Liberal Democrat in Greenwich on 3 May’
See who’s standing in your ward, find manifestos and hustings
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