Cllr Grace Williams, Leader of Waltham Forest Council has written in December 2022 about all we have achieved in the first six months of our new administration.
As we come to the end of 2022, I felt it was an appropriate time to reflect on the past few months. I feel confident that our Labour administration is ensuring the council is focussed on residents and supporting everyone in our borough through these tough times. The revolving doors of Prime Ministers and cabinet ministers has made our job supporting residents that much harder, but we rose to the challenge. We have achieved enormous amounts in the past few months, all on a budget that is increasingly not going as far. We repeat our call that good public services demand good local government funding, and we will continue to campaign for fair funding for our borough as we enter 2023.
Back in July we declared a Cost-of-Living Emergency and in October I set out how we would help residents in our £4m Winter Plan which we have called ‘Your Crisis, Our Action’. A major part of this was our retrofit scheme, using £500,000 of North London Waste Authority money to retrofit 2,000 homes in our borough. I’m delighted to say that work is underway, and residents are already feeling the benefits of warmer homes and lower bills. Our retrofit work has already won awards, including from major Local Government publications such as the MJ, and our eco showroom was recognised at prestigious housing awards.
As part of Your Crisis, Our Action we have recently opened our network of Warm Spaces – including Community Kitchens, Community Living rooms and our fantastic Libraries. I visited the excellent space at Lea Bridge Library and was blown away by how well all our council teams have worked together to make this space warm, accommodating, and ready to support anyone who needs it.
To ensure the borough’s children are getting support too, Cllr Alistair Strathern announced an array of support for families over the difficult winter period. The announcement of £300,000 of support for school’s breakfast clubs was a huge moment for our administration, as we know how important school breakfasts are to ensuring our children are well fed and ready to learn – a key Labour value.
As well as our work on the cost of living, we have kept up the pressure on the national government regarding the essential need for a new Whipps Cross hospital. We had a joint motion in October and have been sending postcards to the Health Secretary reminding him of the urgent need for a new hospital. However, we haven’t been waiting for a hospital to improve the health of our communities, and this month we welcomed the launch of the Marmot report which has looked at health inequalities in the borough and how we can eradicate them.
As you may have seen, the past few months have been difficult for some in our borough – asylum seekers. The government-run hotels in our borough led to some extremely concerning circumstances and I have been speaking to national press about how the government must safeguard children in their care. In December we used our full council motion to declare our ambition to become a Borough of Sanctuary and you can read more about that here.
Our climate work is another area that we have been pushing full steam ahead on since we were re-elected in May. We launched our Climate Action Plan in November, setting out our plan to get to net zero by 2030. Deputy Leader and Cabinet member for Climate and Air Quality, Cllr Clyde Loakes is working hard on achieving various climate promises from our manifesto. These include 3,000 new cycle hangar spaces, even more electric vehicle charging points and various road improvement schemes across the borough to make walking and cycling even easier in our borough. I am delighted that we are still top of the Healthy Streets scorecard rankings, inclusive of housing density.
To round off this extensive list of achievements, we have a great number of new housing developments going up around the borough. Building excellent quality, climate friendly and family-friendly homes in our borough is a top priority and in the past few months, the finishing touches have been put on over 150 social rent homes in our borough, which will now be handed over to residents. I look forward to bringing you more good news from our housing agenda in the new year.
In all our work we have strived to be hand in hand with the community. All ward councillors regularly support local community organisations through community ward funding, and we used £120,000 of the North London Waste Authority Money to give to local organisations focussing on cost-of-living support. We will continue to ensure our community feels all the benefits of our work and I was very pleased to hand out several awards to community organisations and activists at the Pride of Waltham Forest event earlier this month alongside Cabinet colleagues.
All this work shows that the entire Waltham Forest Labour team has been working extremely hard over the past few months to create a fairer, safer, and greener Waltham Forest.