Local elections: ‘How a Labour landslide last year has transformed Swindon’

It was great to deliver an emphatic landslide win last May after Keir Starmer chose Swindon as the key target council and held the Labour local election campaign launch in the town.

It was humbling to win 16 of the 19 seats up for grabs and to finally take control of Swindon Borough Council, after twenty years in opposition.

It was great to see the national Labour election team at work, and see their Project Victory work in action. We can’t wait for it to be rolled out across the country.

Straight after the election, like all the newly won Labour councils, we responded to Keir’s ask of us to deliver a cost-of-living action plan to support residents and signpost them to help following the huge impact of Liz Truss’s catastrophic budget that brought her down and sent inflation and mortgage costs soaring.

We used the first council meeting of the year to set out our new missions for the council:

1. Combat Inequality – make Swindon a fairer place, reduce disadvantage, make poorer areas richer and eliminate big disparities in life expectancy, education levels and social justice
2. Build a Better Swindon – create a town ready for the challenge of the coming decades,
   understanding what facilities and infrastructure we need. Understand the council’s direct and indirect role in improving the town centre and in creating more affordable housing while supporting and brokering support from the private sector.
3. Achieve Net Zero – fully play our part as a council and a town in combatting climate change. Work with communities to find new ways of doing things that help not hinder the natural environment.

I’ve been delighted by how much support that there has been from council staff and residents for the missions. It feels like staff have really got behind them, and it has been brilliant to hear staff discussing how decisions they are making support the work of the missions. I really hope that the Civil Service will get behind the national Labour missions in the same way.

We may have copied the national Labour approach in pursuing Mission-driven government, but a future national Labour government will be following in our footsteps in having to undo the damage caused by years of Conservative mismanagement.

We faced worst budget position in living memory

Prior to taking control, we knew that there were key challenges facing the council. The budget position was described to us as being the worst in living memory for local government when we took over the council. At SBC, there was a projected budget overspend for 23/24 of £10m in July 2023 as well as a projected budget gap for 24/25 of nearly £27m and over £400m of debt that needed to be serviced.

We knew that the Children’s Services departments were not working as well as they should. We spoke to Ofsted as soon as we took over, and at a subsequent visit, they found the service to be ‘Inadequate’. We knew that staff morale was low and residents’ trust in the council and satisfaction in council services was also very low.

We have tried to tackle all of these challenges head on – by working tirelessly to manage spending, we have eliminated the overspend and delivered a small surplus this year and managed to balance the budget for next year.

We have agreed an action plan with Ofsted to improve the Children’s Services department performance and focused heavily on resetting the relationship with the staff. We hope that over time we can prove to residents that the council is more responsive to residents, and we will be able to demonstrate more trust in our services and performance.

Taking the difficult decisions

Like us, a future Labour government under Keir’s leadership will have to really manage expectations to keep residents, members and his Labour group onside. We have had to make difficult decisions to balance the books and had to tell people that we can’t get cracking on all of our plans straight away.

We have had to prioritise key areas and tell others that their ideas will have to remain on the backburner for now.

That isn’t to say that we haven’t made achievements this year. We have been able to deliver the following:

• Carried out the largest engagement project in the council’s history and are using the feedback to develop the Swindon Plan – our strategic plan to deliver on the missions
• Invested £3m in transforming Children’s Services and allocated a further £2m to get the best IT support for the department, a key recommendation of the Ofsted report
• Increased financial support for Foster Carers
• Obtained funding to create the first new youth provision in the Borough in years to help us support our young people and keep them away from crime
• Expanded specialist support for young children by developing a new Early Help centre
• Supported Greenwich Leisure Limited to reopen the Link Leisure Centre after it flooded, and prioritised support for the Swindon Wildcats Ice-hockey team to ensure they could stay in the league
• Worked with Wiltshire Police to fight anti-social behaviour in the town centre and fund additional wardens
• Agreed a deal with Seven Capital to reopen the much-loved local Oasis Leisure Centre, closed under the Tories
• Improved our relationship with key partners such as Historic England and Arts Council England, and Swindon has been designated as an Arts Council Priority Place
• Started the process to make Swindon a Borough of Sanctuary
• Obtained Sports England funding for increasing activity levels in the town
• Relocated Swindon Museum and Art to the Civic Offices, restored the famous Gharial and promoted Swindon’s incredible modern art collection
• Held meaningful talks with the owner of the iconic Mechanics’ Institution (birthplace of the NHS!) and tried to reset the relationship with the Heritage Community in the town
• And finally, we have just unveiled the masterplan for the largest expansion of social housing in living memory delivering hundreds of new council houses for the town

We know that Labour delivers in power, and we know we will be able to do more in Swindon once Keir and his team are in Number 10.