Southend Tories wanted to balance Southend-on-Sea City Council’s budget off the backs of the most vulnerable people in our communities.

 

But on February 22nd, we stunned the Tories by taking charge of their budget with an amendment that made huge improvements and salved some of the pain they planned to heap onto our communities.

 

The Tory cabinet were left flabbergasted when a Labour-organised opposition amendment passed at full council 27 votes to 22.  Our amendments delivered on the following:

 Retaining 5 roles in the Dementia Community Support Team, up from the Tories’ paltry 2 roles which would have effectively ended the service

 Cheaper parking for residents in Zones 1b-3 with average reductions of 11% and NO CHARGES after 6pm for Southend Pass holders to support local people and our high street businesses

 New investment to get more trees in the city and improve our air quality

 Bringing back the cycle network funding that the Tories had left to be forgotten about

 Introducing a cut and collect strategy to our grass cutting regime to keep grass out of drains

 Putting an extra £2.5m more to reverse the Tories’ managed decline of our pavements and roads, taking the investment up to £6.5m

 Hiring 3 new community support officers to tackle antisocial behaviour

 Hiring 3 new civil enforcement officers to focus on bad parking around schools

 Reducing increases to cremation and burial charges to inflation levels, not the Death Tax 20% the Tories wanted to introduce

 Investing £100k in culture and tourism to create more jobs and attract more visitors

 Retaining our graduate scheme so we can grow our own officers and not rely on expensive agency workers

These were serious, costed alternatives to the stagnation and divestment in our communities that the Tories were offering.  The Tories, predictably, threw their toys out and ended up voting against their own budget!  It was farcical in the extreme and underlined why we need the grown ups back in charge after the elections, so please do everything you can to help!