In the first of five interviews with local party leaders ahead of the local election on 5th May, Conservative leader Dan Thomas sets out his priorities for Barnet
By Simon Allin, Local Democracy Reporter
The Barnet Conservative group on the campaign trail (credit Barnet Conservatives)
The Conservatives in Barnet are pledging to keep council tax low, maintain weekly bin collections and protect the Green Belt.
Promising a Barnet “fit for the future”, the Tories have frozen core council tax and plan to increase investment in roads and pavements, CCTV and “community-led infrastructure projects”.
Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service ahead of local election on 5th May, Conservative group leader Dan Thomas claimed all of the pledges set out in the 2018 Tory manifesto had been met. This included a promise to keep council tax low, despite increases in previous years.
The council leader said: “Council tax in Barnet is lower than all our neighbouring boroughs, which are run by Labour, and the rate of increase of council tax has been a lot lower than our neighbouring boroughs.”
Cllr Thomas said the Tories had also kept weekly refuse and recycling collections while neighbouring boroughs had moved to fortnightly rounds.
Priorities for the Conservatives during the next four years include investing more than £32million in the borough’s roads and pavements and carrying out an £800,000 upgrade of the borough-wide CCTV system to prevent crime and prosecute fly-tippers.
The Tories have pledged to protect the Green Belt, oppose overdevelopment and provide £5m for community-led infrastructure projects.
Cllr Thomas promised to invest £20m to improve Barnet’s parks, to achieve a “net-zero council by 2030”, to ensure every school is rated as ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’, and to “continue to deliver affordable homes above our target”.
In 2018, the Tories pledged to “stop overdevelopment” in the borough, but they have subsequently faced criticism from opposition councillors for approving large schemes, particularly in the west of Barnet.
Responding to the concerns, Cllr Thomas said the west of the borough along the A5 had been designated a regeneration zone. “The west of the borough is in a unique situation, with brownfield sites suitable for development,” he said. “The rest of the borough is different. It is suburban in character […] therefore we have to be very careful with the type of development that goes on there.”
Cllr Thomas said he would like to see the government’s housing target for the borough reviewed, citing a possible change in demand for housing across London and the south-east following the Covid-19 pandemic.
A particularly controversial issue during the past four years has been Barnet Council’s contracts with outsourcing giant Capita. Since they were agreed in 2013, they have faced criticism over a string of problems, including two cases of fraud against the council and errors in pension scheme data.
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Cllr Thomas claimed the contracts were providing value for money and that the council was spending less on the outsourced services than it was prior to the contracts. He also defended commissioning extra work from Capita on top of the original contracts, saying that it made sense to give work to a “trusted contractor” that can deliver services “quickly” and “at value”.
In recent months, the Downing Street ‘partygate’ scandal over law-breaking gatherings at the top of government during the Covid-19 lockdown has led to a significant dip in support for the Conservatives nationally. Speaking before Prime Minister Boris Johnson was fined by the police for attending a birthday party that was thrown for him during the first lockdown, Cllr Thomas said the local Conservative group still supported the PM. He praised the “world-class” Covid-19 vaccine rollout and claimed that the Conservatives’ work “restoring the public finances since 2010” had allowed the government to prop up the economy and support businesses during the pandemic.
Cllr Thomas said: “Am I disappointed with what has happened in Downing Street? Yes, of course I am, and many people throughout Barnet are. But these elections are about local services, they are about local councillors, and council tax, and bin collections […] This election is not about Boris Johnson or the government.”
Chancellor Rishi Sunak has also faced criticism over his recent budget, which some believe did not go far enough to help households facing mounting inflation. Responding to the concerns, Cllr Thomas said providing more support would mean more borrowing on top of the debt already incurred during the pandemic, which would “store up more problems for us in the future”.
He added: “Locally, we have done all we can in Barnet by freezing core council tax, and I am grateful for the government’s help by awarding households in bands A to D a £150 rebate [on their council tax bills].”
Cllr Thomas also pointed out that City Hall had increased its share of council tax by almost 9%.
While other councils produced action plans setting out how they would cut carbon emissions to net zero several years ago, Barnet Council produced a framework for a sustainability strategy at the end of last year. In February, the council was one of five London boroughs to score zero on a scorecard system designed to rate local authorities’ preparedness for tackling climate change.
Despite this, Cllr Thomas said he did not believe Barnet was lagging behind other boroughs in its response to climate change. “We’ve been taking action prior to the strategy framework,” he said. “I think now is actually a good time to create the strategy because we are post-Cop26, we are post the Environment Bill, and we are able now to put together our strategy taking into account those two major policy areas, whereas other councils that have sustainability strategies a few years old will have to completely revise theirs.”
The Tory leader called on voters to compare the Conservatives’ track record in Barnet with neighbouring Labour authorities, which he said had higher council tax, higher crime and less frequent bin collections. He added: “In Barnet, we have a plan for the borough to be fit for the future.”
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