Hounslow Council and local services

Local government touches the lives of every resident. Andrew has long argued that from nursery education to rubbish collection to tackling climate change, councils have a responsibility to ensure that local services are provided in a responsive, efficient and effective manner, in accordance with the needs and wishes of local people. The Local Council elections on Thursday 6 May will decide how local services costing £310 million are run and how they are paid for.

Voters elect 60 councillors to represent the 218,000 residents of Hounslow on the Council. But in Hounslow, 35 years of Labour control and then 4 years of the Tories have ensured that local government does not fulfil its responsibilities; real decision-making is remote from local people and conducted in an arrogant manner – a survey of residents in 2008 found that just over a third of people in Hounslow ﴾34 per cent﴿ feel they can influence local decisions.

So your votes matter.

You, the people of Hounslow, have a clear choice at this election - a choice between four more years of Tory muddle, or the opportunity of a radical approach to tackling unemployment and transitioning our community to healthy, green and resilient lifestyles.

Our aim is the creation of a local political system which is based on the interaction of communities in which groups have power, will, knowledge, resources and technology to influence and affect the making of decisions. Where difficult choices must be made, it makes sense to involve the people affected in making those decisions, with bottom-up solutions more readily put into practice than interfering directives from central government, and sometimes the town hall.

We believe the habit of participation is linked with the tools and access to power and a framework of community institutions of greater or lesser structure and formality, through which participation is made relevant and effective. Community politics thus entails a commitment to the dispersal of centralised power in society and a redistribution of power to the communities which make it up.

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