Sutton Labour : On your side
Our 10-point contract with the residents of Sutton
1. We will tackle the cost of living not see you go further into debt.
Labour is on your side and has proposed a national energy plan for a £600 payment to you from a windfall tax on energy companies. Locally we will provide secure, quality job opportunities and attract new business into our borough and promote wider business commitment to the London Living Wage. Poverty and the need for more food banks should never be allowed to increase in Sutton.
2. We will support increased locally based Policing
to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour to stop the borough looking run down. We will establish twice yearly open meetings across the borough where you can all directly question Police in your local area. We will invest in CCTV, better lighting and community safety hubs and work with the community to improve women’s safety locally after recent public scandals. We will commit to make sure Sutton is “No place for hate”
3. We will provide secure affordable homes
for our younger people who are priced out of the borough and build more genuinely affordable, council housing in our borough. This should be safe and learn the lessons of Grenfell Tower. We want low or zero carbon houses and small-scale flats not intense development of tower blocks. We will increase registration and regulation of private landlords to support the many people who are now forced to privately rent instead of be able to buy and introduce a Sutton Private Tenant’s Charter.
4. We will commit to: Cleaner Streets. Cleaner Air.
Too many bins are not emptied and there is too much fly-tipping. The 12-visit rationing of recycling centre visits must end. We will aim to see if “community spring cleans” with community skips could be reintroduced like it existed in the past. We will immediately table a “notice of improvement” of contractor Veolia and then seek to bring the waste contract back in house locally so your complaints are dealt with immediately and not be managed from a distance. We will propose to residents’ ways in which we could withdraw from the Beddington Incinerator contract as well as expensive heating contracts that cost residents money.
5. We will consult residents over parking and traffic schemes.
We will never introduce any road or parking scheme without a full consultation and strong local consent and will ensure changes are driven by resident demands not Town Hall bureaucrats. We support a fairer system for existing parking permit fees and we will fully consult and listen to residents over their parking requirements.
6. We will protect our local environment.
We will fight for our Parks and Open Spaces as we did by opposing building on both Rosehill Park and Sheen Way playing fields, not just one or the other as other Parties cynically did. We will ensure the council plays a key role as part of the Declaration of a Climate Emergency and seeks funds to remediate the threat of flooding in lower lying areas of the borough
7. We will protect our health and social care services and learn the lessons of the COVID pandemic.
We will prepare for future pandemics with stores of PPE and a full resilience plan. We will never let our old people die in large numbers in care homes at a time when Tory Government ministers were breaking the rules. We will fight to keep all acute services at our St Helier Hospital and oppose a highly risky relocation of an A&E needed for a future pandemic right next to a cancer hospital full of clinically shielding cancer patients.
8. We will provide Education and Inclusion for all.
We will promote the undoubted excellence of our locally rooted primary and secondary schools that already provide places for more than 90% of Sutton pupils and will support them to increase that. We support the demands of Sutton Parents campaigning for more SEND support and improved transport. Inclusion is fundamental to our campaigning on areas from blue badge access, to fighting in support of families with children that have special educational needs and ensuring council services are not solely digital by default. We support the dignity of old age and commit to an Age-Friendly Sutton as well as commit to review and improve mental health services and address loneliness exacerbated by the COVID pandemic.
9. We will stop the decline in local arts, sports & culture and revitalise our High Streets
with more meanwhile uses and pop-up shops. We will examine the possibility of the relocation of more accessible Council services to them as a core hub to sustain our High Streets post-pandemic for the long-term and ensure this only happens if it benefits local residents. We will also work with the Mayor of London to review public transport links to improve accessibility. We will seek to increase free access to sports facilities for the less well off from a key public health perspective.
10. We will listen. We will consult.
Too many people cannot get hold of their current Councillors. Labour is standing strong local hard-working candidates to be Councillors. We will bring in a new listening and consultation strategy led by local residents and encourage local “resident juries” and a “People’s Question Time” to hold services to account. We will develop stronger more accountable local committees, with the opportunity for them to become proper local community councils, but only if residents petition and vote for them to be. We will press for revision to existing contracts so that the Council treat employees fairly as part of a longer-term plan to in-source more services so the Council directly provides them. We will also hold our local MPs to account as they may talk about the small stuff but never tell you about all the bad things they vote for in Parliament.