Housing is the number one issue local people raise with me so it is brilliant to be ‘breaking ground’ this week, the builders’ term for beginning the work for 338 new council homes on the Bermondsey site of the old Peek Freans Biscuit Factory.?
Southwark’s Labour council has built more homes in the last five years than any other London borough and there are over 3,000 new council homes in the pipeline now.
It saddens me that other local parties oppose the local Labour agenda when it comes to building new homes here or elsewhere in our community.?Southwark Labour has managed to build new homes whilst keeping a cap on local costs with one of the lowest council tax rates in London thankfully!
Our Labour Government’s ambition to build 1.5 million homes nationally requires local Labour partners to achieve that goal!?
Last week we saw further progress in fixing the NHS too. Labour built our NHS, saved it in 1997 and is repairing it again today with a 24% drop in waiting times at Guys and St Thomas’ hospitals. I want to see more progress at tackling access to GPs but the hospital figures are reassuring.?
The Trussell foodbank charity also just published their statistics for this year. In the 14 years the Tories were in Government (5 in Coalition with the Lib Dems) there was a massive surge in poverty and foodbank dependency.
Since July 2024, numbers have dropped, by 8% last year nationally and Trussell show a massive 21% drop in children needing help in Bermondsey and Old Southwark this year too.
This is great news for local families and I’m proud that some people are already feeling the difference Labour makes in power! We will reduce poverty and help end the reliance on charity handouts for daily essentials.?
I am joining a local patrol of Southwark Council’s excellent new ‘Night-time Patrol Unit’ next week off Tower Bridge Road. The brilliant new council team operates in antisocial behaviour hotspots every day, 6pm-2am and you can seek their help in your area or street if needed. They are responsive and very active and I have been pleased to hear how many people they have already helped.?
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This team help in areas affected by drug use and sales. No family should have heroin peddled or used in their stairwells, but sadly the Green Party supports legalising all drugs including crack and Rohypnol bizarrely. Their party has been taken over by some wacky ‘extremists’ as Darren Johnson described them last week. Darren was their London Assembly member for 16 years but has joined Labour in disgust at the takeover of his former party by some of the people thrown out of Labour for antisemitism.?
In just a few weeks you will decide who runs Southwark council. Please examine the candidates put forward in your local area and let me know if you’d like more information on the people or policies my local team is putting forward!
