Torridge & West Devon Labour Party The official website for the constituency Labour party of Torridge & West Devon
West Devon Borough Council Manifesto 2019
What Tavistock & District Labour Councillors will do if elected to serve you on May 2nd 2019.
Support Sustainable Housing & Sensible Planning
❖ Protect Our Countryside. Our beautiful county is at risk of greedy developers who want to concrete over our green fields to maximise their profits with large scale and out of character developments. We will energetically oppose large scale, green field, private developments and prioritise brownfield and infill sites.
❖ Campaign for Better Services. We will campaign for better services for our towns and villages. All our services, including doctors’ surgeries and schools, are already creaking and suffering from government cuts. New housing and new residents will place even greater strain our stretched services.
❖ Provide Genuinely Affordable Housing. We will actively promote and prioritise genuinely affordable & high-quality housing for local people with a strong connection to our communities.
❖ Support Local Democracy & Decision Making. We will encourage and support all parishes and towns in West Devon to develop Neighbourhood Plans and ensure communities are involved in the decisions on where new housing and services should go.
❖ Sustain Our Rural Communities. We want our towns and villages to be vibrant, sustainable communities. We will therefore prioritise local, affordable housing to enable people to live in the communities they grew up in. We will look to prohibit new housing being used as holiday homes.
Open up Local Democracy
❖ Open up Decision Making. To make council meetings more accessible to all members of the public – Council meetings are currently open to the public to attend, but we believe the structure of those meetings is not conducive to allowing the local community to have their voices heard. We propose to reorganise how and when Council meetings take place, making them more accessible to the local community.
❖ Encourage Public Debate. We believe that local people should get to have a say in what happens in their community, therefore we propose that local people should always have the opportunity to attend and have their voices heard at open meetings about all issues which directly affect the local community.
❖ Ensure 100% Transparency. To make all council decisions completely transparent to the public – We believe that everybody in this community should be 100% clear about what changes are being made by the Council, therefore all decisions and changes should be made public, and decision by councillors recorded and published. We will ensure all key meetings are accessible through social media.
Build our Local Economy
“We will increase spending in West Devon by ensuring money invested by the Council in our communities is retained and respent in those communities.”
❖ Source Locally. The Council will seek to source all goods and services locally.
❖ Invest Locally. Where this is not possible, the Council will invest in the setting up of local co-operative businesses to meet the need.
❖ Pay the Real Living Wage. The Council will pay the real living wage, currently £9 per hour for trained staff over 18.
❖ Support the Rural Economy. The Council will invest funds to support businesses that support more remote communities, including shops and petrol stations.
❖ Develop Community Energy. The Council will look to work with neighbouring Councils, to develop community energy companies to provide lower cost gas and electricity to our communities.
Protect our Environment
❖ Improve public transport. We will campaign to make public transport more user-friendly and affordable, linking bus and train routes and meeting the needs of all user groups.
❖ Reduce air pollution. We will campaign to ensure that all new Borough Council vehicles are electric.
❖ Make recycling and waste management work better. We will ensure that recycling centres and bin collections work for residents as well as service providers. We will make tackling fly tipping a priority.
❖ Help to access renewable energy for all and reduce fuel poverty. We will work with local energy groups to find cheaper ways of making renewable energy for everyone. Make use of local advice and support groups to help people on low income to access funding for insulation and other fuel reduction measures.
❖ Safeguard public toilets for the future. We will find imaginative solutions to maintain access to public toilets at reduced cost.