Campaigning hard in Wycombe

It is widely accepted that effective campaigning is key if Labour want to win councillor seats, councils and parliamentary seats in the South East over the coming months and years. Also key will be to target the ‘squeezed middle’ Home Counties voter who may never have considered voting Labour.

If you are a small group of Councillors, or have no Councillors at all, taking the Tories on can be a hard task.

As of last May Wycombe CLP has seven councillors on the District Council working in opposition to 39 Tories and to some extent 9 Lib Dems (incidentally some who have been active Labour Party members, but who thought the Lib Dem ticket was a safer bet). It’s fair to say we are small in number, but I think we punch way above our weight.

As leader of the group my aim is to target key areas where local Labour policy is strong and we are able to build effective campaigns which will spark constituents’ interest across the District, not just in the three wards Labour Councillors serve. Our main campaign has centred on housing.

In December 2011 Wycombe District Council transferred its 6000 council homes over to a brand new housing association in one of the final housing stock transfers before the self financing system is introduced. It was a complicated transfer, tenant led, but certainly driven by a Tory Council who no longer wanted to be a social landlord. As a group we organised into a team of lead councillors backed by a research team made up of interested and available local members. We passionately believed that the transfer should have benefited future tenants as well as current tenants and that above all it should have represented value for money for all of Wycombe’s residents.
Despite freedom of information requests, letters to Government Ministers and over 37 questions in the council chamber much of the information relating to the transfer was guarded closely by the Council, who refused access to key documents which detailed the financial and social implications of the transfer. At every stage we were able to share this lack of transparency with the public through press releases, statements and via the membership. Like many areas of the South East, Wycombe District is traditionally ‘blue’ and it was important to attack the issue on a number of levels including showing the failings of the business case. I still cannot see how the Tories think that selling off our Council homes for less than £1,600 each represents value for money!

The Labour Group was never going to win the vote, however we certainly won the argument and raised the Labour Party’s profile locally, particularly with those who have never supported the Party.

Now the transfer has completed we are still focussed on ensuring that tenants and residents get everything they were promised. If the Tory Council fails to deliver we will be there to point it out!

We also continue to campaign on other key housing issues such as homelessness (hugely helped by Reading CLP), void properties, rogue landlords and next on our list are affordable homes. In 2008 the Buckinghamshire Strategic Housing Market Assessment Report stated that the net annual need for affordable housing for the district was 425 dwellings. Over the last three years the council has been way off target achieving an average of 200 per year. As a Group we are aware of many local people in their 20’s and 30’s unable to rent or buy in the area as well as businesses choosing to locate elsewhere in the Thames valley due to the lack of affordable homes for their staff.

We’ve set out our vision for housing across the District in a CLP housing policy which is forming the policy basis of many campaigns to come.

Councillor Victoria Groulef is leader of the Labour Group on Wycombe District Council. Wycombe Labour Group received a campaign award at last weekend's Labour South East annual conference.