Brentwood Conservatives - Election Manifesto 2024
1. Deliver Cleaner Streets
We will keep streets clean and tidy and will respond promptly to fly-tipping and littering.
Within months of taking power last year the coalition group running our council promptly presided over much of the Borough being left with long uncut grass verges.
Since then they have compounded this failure to offer well run services by allowing litter bins to repeatedly overflow around many areas of the Borough and leaving rotting vegetation along pavements, kerbsides and bus stops in both residential areas and also rural communities.
A Conservative Borough Council will :
- Assign more resources to streetcare
- Offer greater transparency over service delivery by publishing on it’s website the schedule for road sweeping and litter bin emptying.
- Where a litter bin is regularly overflowing through normal use we will increase the frequency from weekly to twice-weekly.
- We will also improve the ease of reporting issues for members of the public.
2. Tackle Anti-Social Behaviour
We will focus our resources on working alongside Essex Police to reduce anti-social behaviour.
Making sure that our communities are safe places is a key priority of both your Conservative Team and our Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, Roger Hirst.
A Conservative run council will :
- Immediately assign additional resources into the Council’s Community Safety Team.
- Take a zero-tolerance approach to anti-social behaviour across the Borough.
- We will levy the highest possible fines on enforcement issues to deter future poor behaviour.
- We will continue to invest in CCTV monitoring.
· In addition we will work across all of our key services to see that our housing estates and public spaces are regularly inspected and of a high standard. We believe strongly that this helps to deter Anti-Social Behaviour and crime in such areas.
3. Keep Council Tax Low
We will make sure that money is wisely spent and that we deliver good value to the local tax payer.
The LibDem / Labour Coalition running our Borough Council voted to increase the Borough precept by 2.99%, which is the maximum that they could without holding a public referendum.
Brentwood Conservatives proposed an amended budget with a lower precept. This was refused by Liberal Democrat and Labour councillors.
A Conservative run Brentwood Council would cost you less.
4. Protect Our Countryside
We will fight harmful development and protect our British countryside.
We will stand against any harmful development brought forward in the Borough. Whilst we welcome green energy production sourced from wind turbines in the North Sea, we are opposed to installation of pylons across Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk as proposed by National Grid. We support the sea-based off-shore alternative that would allow us to retain agricultural land and would not spoil our countryside.
5. Support Our High Streets
We will support our High Streets, local shops and small businesses.
We continue to support the mixed development which Conservatives initiated, for the Bay Tree Centre in Brentwood which is planned to include a cinema.
We will help to encourage retail activity in our three high streets of Ingatestone, Shenfield and Brentwood as well as the numerous small shopping parades found in residential estates and villages around our Borough.
We support improved parking within the Borough in order to encourage shopper footfall to help our local retailers thrive.
6. Deliver Better Services
We will deliver high quality services and put our local residents first.
Many residents have spoken to us about the quality of services provided by the council and also that they find it difficult to get through to a relevant person to talk to about their problem or issue.
We will seek to improve the quality of all core services and to ensure that where appropriate the option of a face-to-face meeting with a council officer is made available.
We will also review the range of services offered to see in which areas these can be improved to help our residents.