LABOUR: BUILDING READING’S FUTURE
Securing a “thriving and buoyant economy”
We said when we launched our manifesto for the 2008 elections that Labour had worked hard to secure Reading’s “thriving and buoyant economy” - to guarantee the prosperity of the town on which all else depends. We said we believed the years of Labour control had been good years for Reading, and good years for Reading people.
That claim has been more than put to the test by the global economic recession that has hit Reading as it has the rest of the country and indeed the world. We believe it is thanks to the work that Reading’s Labour Council has put in, in partnership with business and with Reading’s communities, that Reading has been better placed to come through that recession better than many other towns.
So we were pleased but not surprised when the independent Centre for Cities report said that Reading, alongside Brighton, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Milton Keynes, was one of the 'five to watch’ - places with the right characteristics to succeed after the downturn. And they added that Reading had the third highest average weekly earnings of any UK town or city and the fifth most skilled workforce.
That is not to say that many people in Reading have not suffered in this recession, but we are also proud of the way the Council and its partners swung into action to offer every help they could to people in difficulty, and that - with a Labour Government also committed to that goal - the level of unemployment, the number of business failures and the number of house repossessions here in Reading have been much lower than in earlier recessions in the 1980s and 1990s when the Conservatives were in power.
“What has Labour ever done for us?”
In 2008, Labour’s key priorities were to:
• Make sure crime in Reading goes on falling – and crime fell by 4% last year following a fall of 20% over the previous four years
• Make sure every child gets the best possible start in life – we have now invested £125 million in our schools and the percentage of children with 5 A*-Cs at GCSE has gone up from 42.9% in 1999 to 70.9% in 2009
• Develop more affordable housing – and we completed 294 new homes in 2008-9
• Make sure older people and the disabled receive the help they need – we have just put £5 Million into the community care budget to maintain this commitment
• Make sure Reading benefits to the full from the £664Million we had won for revamping Reading Station – and work starts this year
• Work with John Madejski on developing the land between the station and Friar Street, and on the next phase of Chatham Place – and planning approval has now been given
• Building a third bridge, the Oxford Road relief road and other improvements to cut by half the 155,000 cars that drive through the town centre every day – and the third bridge is part of the Council’s bid to the government under the new Urban Challenge Fund and the Oxford Road relief road is incorporated into the station plan
• Deliver a new, larger, state of the art, theatre to replace the ageing Hexagon and a modern, improved central library – sadly this is on hold because of the economic downturn
• Promote access to sport for all, with the Sport Reading partnership helping Reading children participate in 5 hours of sport and exercise a week – and this is well on track and we’ve introduced free swimming for under-16s too
• Reduce Reading Council’s carbon emissions by at least 10% by 2012 and become one of the leading Councils in carbon reduction and leading the fight against climate change - and we have endorsed the 10:10 campaign which commits us to achieving that target earlier.
A full record of the Council’s achievements since the last Borough elections in 2008 is available on www.readinglabour.org.uk
In those elections Labour lost majority control of the Council but has continued in minority administration, with a Labour Cabinet working with Council officers to build a good future for Reading.
It is fair to say that the other parties have come up with very few ideas, and at the Council’s budget meeting on 23 February 2010 did not come forward with any proposal to change the Cabinet’s recommendations.
In these elections in 2010 we are asking the people of Reading to continue to put their trust in Labour, which is the only party with a vision for the future of our town.
Building Reading’s Future: Labour’s 20-point plan
In 2010 Labour’s priorities are to:
• Continue to promote the economic prosperity of the town, seeing through the huge projects at Reading Station and Dee Park that will being many jobs for local people, working in partnership with businesses large and small, seizing opportunities to get more investment in the town – including bidding for city status in order to get a higher profile for the town, and looking to help and support all those suffering hard times
• Look to the future by requiring all new buildings to be to high environmental standards, improving the insulation and so on of older buildings (including the Council’s own), encouraging the provision of wind turbines and looking to opportunities for the Council to generate sustainable power to be fed into the National Grid, continuing to replace street lights with more energy-efficient ones, greening our streets and neighbourhoods, looking to increase the number of allotments, and continuing to improve our recycling rates
• Bring about a step change in transport in Reading through the redevelopment of Reading Station coupled with our Urban Challenge Fund bid, greatly improving public transport, keeping Reading Buses in public ownership and continuing to develop its services, bringing in lower bus fares – including for youngsters, providing improved facilities for cyclists and pedestrians, reducing the number of cars on the road so cutting congestion and pollution, and - through a pioneering Low Emission Zone - keeping through lorries off our street
• Learn the lessons of last winter by improving liaison with the Met. Office and review the Council’s gritting policy, particularly as regards the supply and use of grit bins on steep-sloping streets
• Following the abandonment by PRUPIM of their plans to build 7500 homs in Kennet Meadows, seek to put the Meadows into a trust for their protection long-term, investigating the option of acquiring land there as a basis for this
• Secure long-term protection for precious areas like Kennetmouth, the Crescent Road playing fields, and Tilehurst Allotments, and continue to look to extend and enhance public open space across the town
• Work with communities and neighbourhoods across the town and with ethnic minority organisations and so on to promote good community relations, make people and communities feel safer, and banish hatred from our streets
• Work with the police and with local communities to develop and get the best out of neighbourhood policing, looking to maintain and if possible to increase the number of police officers and PCSO’s on Reading’s streets to make sure crime continues to be on a downward trend and to tackle issues like anti-social behaviour, vandalism and graffiti
• Support the proposal for the Post Office to become a People’s Bank, working closely with local Credit Unions, and hope that the Post Office in the Civic Offices can pioneer this service locally
• Retain the Council’s housing stock and, as the work to bring it up to Decent Homes standard concludes, work with tenants on a Decent Neighbourhoods programme to improve the environment on our Council estates, and take every opportunity to increase the amount of affordable housing for local people
• Work with landlords and partners to ensure that decent homes standards are achieved also in the private and registered social landlord sectors, and use the new powers available to us to police and control the spread of Houses in Multiple Occupation
• Progress our pioneering heatseekers/green warm homes initiative in which we are surveying every property in the borough and then giving those that need it advice and grants to help cut their energy bills and their carbon footprint
• Work to give a good start in life to every child, retaining and developing the thirteen Children’s Centres we have built across the Borough and working with the NHS to support families promptly and effectively
• Continue to develop the school meals service as an important contribution to children’s health, and look to take advantage of any scheme brought in by central Government to extend entitlement to free school meals
• Continue to work with the police, the NHS and others to improve child protection in Reading and keep our children safe
• Maintain and build on the improvement in GCSE and A-level results, and put extra effort in to try and secure further significant improvement at KS2
• Continue to maintain, and where resources permit improve, our schools and other buildings
• Continue to invest in our children’s play areas and work generally to make Reading a child-friendly town
• Maintain our commitment to the elderly and disabled, continue with the successful reablement programme and look to develop further extra care provision and so on to secure the best possible quality of life for them
• Maintain Reading's generous and unrivalled support to the voluntary sector and continue to help local groups and ethnic minority organisations who are keen to develop their own community facilities
Building on what we have achieved
These priorities do build on and take forward what Labour has achieved since Reading became a unitary authority, and in some areas on what Labour has done since first taking control of the previous Borough Council in 1986.
We make no apologies for that, our values have been consistent and we have worked hard to deliver for local people. But they also respond to the new situation created by the economic recession the continuing challenge of climate change, and the developing hopes and ambitions of communities across Reading.
Over the last two years, the other parties have had nothing to offer, have put forward nothing in the way of new initiatives, and had no changes to propose to Labour’s budget, which means they had no changes to propose to Labour’s programmes.
We are not complacent, we are always open to new ideas, and we sincerely believe that Labour remains the best choice for Reading.
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