Labour’s Five Pledges to You
We will:
- Invest in local services and provide real opportunity for all Brentwood residents
- Deliver the new homes our Borough needs, where they are needed, and at an affordable price
- Champion the community with real support for our volunteers, charities and services
- Demand more from the County Council to improve education, libraries and roads
- Breathe new life into our community and promote our location as a great place for business
Pledge 1: Invest in local services and provide real opportunity for all Brentwood residents
We will:
- end the failure to house the homeless in our community by building accommodation in Brentwood;
- abolish the second homes council tax discount and reform empty homes council tax relief to eliminate abuse by landlords;
- support the Children’s Society initiative to exempt all care leavers in the county from council tax up to the age of 25;
- seek accreditation for the Council as a Living Wage employer;
- create apprenticeships for young people within the Council and the community;
- increase security for tenants by encouraging long-term tenancies and re-establish lifetime homes for social tenants;
- require private landlord accreditation to provide decent accommodation and support private sector tenants.
Pledge 2: Deliver the new homes our Borough needs, where they are needed, and at an affordable price
We will:
- commit to building enough homes within five years to end our housing waiting list;
- reconsider the local development plan so that larger scale social housing building programmes are re-started and developers cannot ‘buy their way out’ of obligations at low cost;
- introduce new modern standards for housebuilding and design including zero-carbon homes;
- also give local people buying their first home ‘first dibs’ on new homes built in their area to give them confidence that new homes will be available to them and their families;
- provide additional homes by bringing empty houses back into use and taxing empty homes more;
- re-start local plans in our towns, parishes and villages address the need for older people’s housing, ensuring that choice and downsizing options are readily available;
- ensure that key workers can live locally in our Borough;
- change planning policies that allow homes to be built without adequate parking;
- support only proposals where roads, transport, schools, green spaces and surgeries are guaranteed.
Pledge 3: Champion the community with real support for our volunteers, charities and services
We will:
- secure long-term, stable funding for groups like Brentwood Community Transport, Citizens Advice and our Council for Voluntary Services;
- back actions that seek to improve the Borough’s local health provision and support the Mental Health Challenge;
- provide the resources needed to end rough sleeping in Brentwood;
- use our role in Public Health planning to demand expansion of local NHS services;
- use all avenues to protect our post offices, pharmacies, high street banks, sport clubs, pubs and independent shops.
Pledge 4: Demand more from the County Council to improve education, libraries and roads
We will:
- reject the proposed library closures and service cuts, instead offering to help promote local libraries and share services;
- work with the County Council to plan primary school places to anticipate demand;
- demand bus route cuts are reversed to improve access from rural communities to services such as hospitals, whilst supporting Brentwood Community Transport’s services;
- campaign for our street lights to be turned back on through investment in efficient LED lighting;
- develop more 20mph zones in residential areas;
- work tirelessly to improve response time to repair roads, fill potholes, replace broken paving and make cyclists safe.
Pledge 5: Breathe new life into our community and promote our location as a great place for business.
We will:
- develop council sites for the benefit of the community – attracting major names and facilitating opportunities for local small businesses;
- be ambitious for our town centres future as retail hubs, rather than see them as residential development opportunities;
- introduce a brown badge scheme to improve the access to our High Streets, whilst more vigorously enforcing against illegal parking;
- encourage more businesses to move to Brentwood by targeting reductions in business rates;
- create a new parking strategy that reduces price and increases spaces throughout the borough;
- ensure high standards of street cleaning across the borough;
- increase tourism by advertising our heritage & leisure facilities;
- support local entrepreneurs to start business and provide mentorship.