By Cllr Joe Riley, Conservative Councillor for Harington Ward, Formby and local Formby resident.
Your vote has NEVER been more vital, delivered in person at polling stations, or by post, which is an easily arranged process. Not voting isn’t an option to even be considered.
Labour’s misappropriation of funding beggars belief. They simply blame government cuts when they can’t even manage the cash they have.
From Southport Pier in the north (£3m spent on new boarding to cover a rusting infrastructure, which will now cost £13m to fix) to Bootle New Strand in the south (cost £32m to buy, fell in value to £17m, but is still incurring £3m in annual interest charges) the picture is one of fiscal chaos.
And, to name but one general provision, children’s social services are £14m in the red (top-heavy management and insufficient actual workers). So much so that the government has had to send inn overseers.
Not enough money is the universal Labour response to virtually every situation. Yet, time after time, Sefton Council has missed deadlines to apply for various government grants that are available.
There is no fiscal strategy beyond dogmatic schemes, the most glaring example being to create Destination Bootle, the notion of a new Venice on the banks of the Leeds/Liverpool canal, which, incidentally, the rivers authority refuse to dredge! We must start to think big and give the relevant information on this mismanagement to voters on social media the doorstep and through leafleting.
And what about public hustings? We must throw down that gauntlet as well. It’s all very well being a dustpan and brush caretaker of wards. You know the sort of thing: hole in road, fill in hole, tick box.
But property values are being affected by badly run social housing schemes. In some areas, a whole way of life is under threat. So gone are the days of standing with a litter-picker in front of an un-watered sapling, thinking that is the modus operandi of local politics.
We must take Labour to task for running down the heart of once desirable communities and neglecting our heritage.
But we must also be realistic enough to admit that Conservative voting apathy has been a massive contributor to Labour’s success locally at the polls. They now have 52 out of 66 councillors in Sefton, an unthinkable situation not very many years ago.
A fightback will start now - a full nine months before the next set of elections in May.
