As May 6 comes closer, our manifesto series sees Andy Croy from Wokingham Labour set out his party’s principles to PHIL CREIGHTON

A VOTE for a Labour councillor is a vote for a local person who puts the interests of the residents first. That’s our strongest manifesto commitment.”

That’s the promise from Cllr Andy Croy, the leader of Wokingham Labour at Wokingham Borough Council

He says that any Labour candidate elected on Thursday, May 6 will not be forced to vote as directed by Labour party whip, but by putting their ward first.

“Residents want councillors who speak up for them, they don’t want one who has to explain why they have voted along party lines. This is very important.

“(Putting party first) has been a problem for many Conservative councillors and probably some of the Lib Dem councillors. The way the council operates means that people are saying we don’t want this in my ward, but my councillors voted for it.”

He adds: “If you vote for a Labour candidate, and you get a Labour councillor, that person will be around for the next four years. They won’t disappear until the next election.

“People who don’t normally vote Labour vote Labour because they know that our councillors are there working for them all through the year. Labour councillors represent excellent value for money: they will always stand up for the area, they will always be around, working for the area.

“In Norreys ward, Cllr Rachel Burgess had dealt with more than 200 individual resident queries in the past couple of years – a huge number. It’s not the glamorous stuff and rarely makes the papers.”

Cllr Croy also pledges that his team will cap their councillors’ expenses to the 2010 levels.

“We have never voted for a pay rise, we have never taken a pay rise. We’re the lowest funded local authority in the country, we’ve had 10 years of austerity and the other councillors are happy enough to take the pay rises.

“There’s a moral voice there.”

This moral voice extends to issues such as climate emergency where, he says, the other parties voted in favour of a third runway at Heathrow – “an utterly appalling thing to do”.

“If you’re serious about cutting your carbon dioxide emissions, we have to be reducing air transport, not encouraging it. It probably took us about 10 seconds as a group to decide how we’d vote.

“We want the message to go back very clearly: the priority must be carbon dioxide emissions. That third runway will generate a massive amount of extra carbon dioxide.”

He also berates the Conservatives and Lib Dems for arguing over the number of trees planted, with the ruling group pledging 250,000 and the Lib Dems wanting 300,000.

“It’s an absurd race to see who can put the biggest number of a leaflet,” Cllr Croy says. “We need to take the politics out of the climate emergency response, which is why all our candidates are committed to the idea of a citizens assembly, just one part of our environmental package.”

He says that Wokingham Labour councillors would push for the local plan update that would support sustainability in every single way, including building design, transport provision and energy.

“We as a borough council actually have a chance to influence what our new buildings will look like for the next half-century. This will be our last chance to realistically design a plan that will have an influence on housing.”

Housing numbers is a sore point for many in the borough. Cllr Croy says that the national Conservative government’s manifesto made it clear that they were going to increase housing numbers.

“The much bigger train coming down the track is the changes in planning laws,” he says. “The redesignation of the country of areas of protection, redevelopment and growth will effectively open up the whole borough to housing and it will be a disaster.

“There is no point having a plan where we’ve had buildings or settlements concentrated in several areas around the borough because the whole borough will be up for grabs.

“We have a government committed to ripping up so-called democratic control of planning in the name of making it simpler – it will be a developer’s charter.”

Cllr Croy wants there to be more democratic controls for local people, with councillors able to stand up for their residents.

“Having Labour councillors means you’ve got a much larger body of people willing to look for the planning reasons to oppose unwanted developments,” he says.

On transport, Labour would do what it could to encourage people to get out of their cars and on to bikes, walking or public transport.

“Because of covid, public transport is quite hard, but it’s the easiest one to ramp up, it’s just a question of engaging with and supporting Reading Buses.

“The main reason why people don’t cycle is because the roads are dangerous, or they feel unsafe on the road. So you have to prioritise cyclists. That’s a trade-off we have to make if we want to get people out of their cars and onto the bikes.

“Greenways are not a cycle superhighway. They’re nice, but pseudo bridleways I’m not sure are the answer to our community problems.

“One of the frustrating things we seem to have is a culture of trying to do the minimum: we’re not making our new roads as good as they can possibly be for cyclists or buses. That’s what we need to aspire to.”

Labour would also be pushing for more resourcing for school transport, calling for a joined-up approach on everything from walking to school, parking restrictions and enforcement and supporting home learners.

On adult social services, Labour would be looking to end ‘demand management”.

“It’s a policy of the borough to manage demand for its services,” he says. “We don’t want that. The demand must be driven by need not by the borough’s managing of need. There are some areas of care that aren’t regulated, we’re looking at a licencing scheme.”

This would make it easier to ensure council services were run to a gold standard.

Just before the council broke up for the elections, it passed an equalities policy, but Wokingham Labour would be seeking immediate changes.

“The first thing we would do is rewrite it so that people can actually understand it,” he says.

 “We’re also selecting a slate of candidates that actually looks a little bit like the borough. I was appalled to see the Lib Dem slate (of candidates) and every single person is white. We’re getting into a quarter of the way through the 21st century in a borough that is a mixed population and it’s increasingly diverse and they haven’t managed to find themselves a single black or minority ethnic council candidate. It’s a terrible state of affairs.”

Labour says it would also seek to take concerns from ethnic minorities seriously. Last summer, Cllr Croy called on councils to fly a Black Lives Matter flag in honour of George Flloyd, who died at the hand of US police officers. “But neither council would do it,” he says.

Wokingham Labour wants to boost recycling rates and adds: “No one is threatening to cut weekly bin collections apart from the Conservatives. It’s almost like a straw man they’re raising unless they know something we don’t. The threat (of removing it) is imaginary and made up by the Conservatives so they have something to talk about.”

On education, Labour would seek to help pupils learn in a safe environment.

“One of the issues seems to be the appalling sort of misogyny that’s going on in our schools and does not seem to be reported. The first thing we’d want to do is have an overview with the schools and see what was going on,” he says.

“We have been trying to get a system to report hate crime, but haven’t been able to do this yet. At the moment, we’ve got no idea what is going on because the schools all use or have different standards for reporting, you can’t compare one school to another.

“After the Black Lives Matter campaigns, one of the things we can do to make sure that black, Asian and Latino children feel safe in our schools is for them to know that if they report something as racist, or homophobic, or any other forms, then it’s taken seriously. At the moment we cannot give that assurance.”

Cllr Croy adds that Labour would switch the free school meal voucher system, used during holidays, to a cash payment system.

“We’re disappointed the Conservatives went for the easy option. It’s a typical Conservative way of doing it: get a company to sort it out, let somebody else make a bit of a profit off it. We would much rather give the cash straight to the parents.”

And moving on, a Labour-run council would be looking to work specifically with poverty-facing charities to tackle the issues being faced.

“It’s a big issue. You have to engage with those charities specifically with the aim of alleviating or taking people out of poverty and alleviating the impact of poverty. Conservatives, every time there’s an answer they don’t agree with they hide (it) in something else.”

He adds: “We are standing up for the most vulnerable people across the whole borough.”

Andy Croy is standing for election for Labour in Bulmershe and Whitegates. His opponents are Shahdid Younis (Conservative) and Shelia Jordan (Lib Dem)

This piece was originally published in Wokingham.Today’s print edition of April 8, before the news that the Duke of Edinburgh had passed away. We are publishing it to ensure that the three main parties contesting Wokingham borough have pieces outlining their vision for the council ahead of May 6, and acknowledge that campaigning for the local elections has been paused during the national period of mourning