Lancaster and Fleetwood Labour Party The official website of Lancaster and Fleetwood Labour Party
While local Green Party operatives are telling Lancaster residents that they’ll “do what we can to mitigate the effects of” the South Lancaster decision, at the city council none of the Green Party cabinet members of the city council are willing to take responsibility for South Lancaster – despite holding the planning portfolio. As a consequence, Labour has been asked to do this. Negotiations continue – as you can imagine it is a big ask when you know the leadership of the council is seeking to frustrate the project.
To recap:
- the Green Party took the leadership of the city council in May this year
- the Green Party holds the cabinet portfolios of leader, planning & economic prosperity (two out of those three are in the photo), and
- the Green Party Leader of the City Council, Caroline Jackson at no point in the debate and discussions leading up to the South Lancaster vote actually tried to put the votes together to see the proposal defeated.
It was Labour who:
- secured commitments to net carbon zero, contracts for local businesses & strengthened community engagement in the agreement between city & county, after Green Party operatives forgot to ask for this in the negotiations with the county council, and
- had the financial exposure of the city council further reduced.
A quick fact check:
- the county council, not the city council accepted £140 million of infrastructure funding from the Government,
- the £140 million in funding is paid on the basis of the county council’s expenditure incurred in building the agreed infrastructure works,
- The £140 million funds the spine road, the Galgate by-pass and the connection to the M6 Junction,
- the developer contributions from building homes will go to funding active & sustainable transport, new schools and expanding GP provision (amongst other things), and
- it is pretty usual to ask developers to contribute to transport, schools and medical services – what’s different about this process is that it is trying to get developers to pay enough to actually deliver this infrastructure.
And as a quick reminder:
– No, the City Council didn’t agree to build 9185 homes in August – more….
