ConservativeHome's Local Government Blog

Wakefield's Cllr Mike Walker explains how he turned wards run by Labour for 26 years into Tory wards with four figure majorities

This is the text of the talk that Cllr Mike Walker of Wakefield West ward gave at the 2008 Spring Forum in Gateshead.  Last week he held his seat with a majority of 1,741.

This ward has 52% social housing, a very high deprivation index and is home to four Labour councillors. Labour controlled the ward with large majorities for 26 years.

We now fully control the ward and have done so for the last three elections - all with increasing four figure majorities. This will be repeated in six weeks' time.

We do not follow the normal approach of hordes of activists and floods of leaflets at election times. We are of the opinion that victories produced by such methods tend to be unsustainable and are significantly susceptible to national mood.

Large amounts of money and manpower are unnecessary. Our way of working is an ongoing and inclusive engagement with the electorate.

Our team is small – three full-time cllrs ensuring an almost daily presence on the streets backed up by 3-4 helpers to deliver the leaflet at election times. No election has cost more than £195.

Gloucestershire Conservatives use council tax to put 63 more police officers on the county's streets

Congratulations to Cllr Julie Girling who sent ConservativeHome this YouTube video of a recent Politics Show programme report dedicated to Gloucestershire Tories' decision to spend £2.2m putting 63 extra police officers into areas where high visibility policing could reassure and protect the public:

It won't be an iTunes hit but Hammersmith Tories launch musical YouTube to celebrate their council tax reduction

ConservativeHome originally reported on the H&F tax cut here.

It can be done: South Norfolk Council freezes council tax

South Norfolk Council joins Westminster and East Hampshire as the three local authorities in the country that are freezing council tax.  Hammersmith & Fulham, as we reported at the end of last year, are in a league of their own with a second successive 3% reduction in their levy.

South Norfolk switched from LibDem to Tory control at last year's elections with twenty council seats won by the Conservatives.  During 12 years in charge the LibDems had increased council tax by 285%.

Council Leader John Fuller issued the following statement:

"We approach running the Council by applying Conservative values of thrift & enterprise whilst making sure that the state is there to help those who cannot help themselves.  We are a Council that has now got a grip on its projects and is putting resources into its priority areas, whilst freezing council tax.  But that hasn’t meant cuts.  Quite the reverse.  We’ve improved services by spending more on recycling, tackling anti-social behaviour whilst helping the old and infirm remain in their homes with extra resources for aids-and-adaptation & expanding the handy-man service amongst many other improvements. We are not a business, but being more business-like has meant that we have been able to get a firmer grip on the public finances to providing better value for money for residents whilst delivering much more.   And that’s what Local Government should be all about."

Some related links:

• South Norfolk Tories launch their green manifesto on YouTube (proving 'the And theory' - Tory councillors that are green and tax-cutters)
• Matthew Elliott of the TaxPayers' Alliance on Local Government payroll growth
• How council tax has consistently outpaced inflation

Harry Phibbs: In 2008 are surgeries still an effective use of local councillors?

Harry is a Hammersmith & Fulham councillor.

Councillors are not supposed to be full time but to bring some sense of reality from the outside world into Town Halls. Given each Council has a budget of tens of millions, usually hundreds of millions, it is a huge responsibility to keep track of it all so our time is very precious.

Like MPs, councillors have surgeries. Sometimes people go to the wrong one. When people have raised immigration or the NHS with me I have passed the details on to our MP. But more often the traffic is the other way, with people raising problems such as housing with their MP rather than the councillor.

When first elected in 2006 I was a bit put off surgeries because nobody turned up to the first couple I did. I had a book to read - but it was still a bit of an anticlimax. Meanwhile vast amount of case work came through by email. Cases brought by telephone comes not far behind (in a fit of accessibility which bemuses colleagues I have my mobile phone number listed on the Council website.) Then there are also plenty of causes I am given to champion by people I bump into in the street. In crude numerical terms surgeries are stradlers in terms of case work.

So to manage time sensibly I take the surgeries on a rota with my fellow two ward councillors rather than us all three turning up to each one. We have also reduced the frequency from weekly to monthly - with the offer to arrange to see someone straight away for anything urgent. Rationalising the time spent allows us to keep in touch with residents in other ways - not least canvassing regularly not just at elections.

But I am a convert to the value of keeping surgeries as an option for those residents who wish to use them. Often people want to show me papers, sometimes complicated diagrams in the case of planning applications. Not everyone has email. Often people prefer to discuss their problems face to face rather than over the phone. Perhaps they feel awkward asking for a separate meeting - feeling it would be a special favour while regarding a slot at a surgery as their due.

Those who come to surgeries are often at the end of the line. Baffled by jargon. Driven witless by bureaucracy. They are victims of the system that was supposed to help them. "My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised," declared Jesse Jackson when he was running for US President in 1984. Sometimes at the end of a surgery I'm reminded of his words.