Local party chair says the main issues for the Greens are cleaner and safer streets, improved green spaces, and housing, writes Nick Clark, Local Democracy Reporter
The chair of the local Green Party wants to “restore that sense of pride to the borough”.
Curtis Cooper, chair of Barking and Dagenham Green Party and a candidate standing in Northbury ward, says the main issues for the Greens in the borough are cleaner and safer streets, improved green spaces, and housing.
“We are a very proud borough, we’re very proud of where we live, we’re very proud of our roots, our heritage, whether that be in South Asia, whether that be in the Caribbean, whether that be in Africa, whether that be coming from the borough for generations,” Cooper told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS).
“To see the level of littering and fly-tipping on the streets, it’s quite disheartening for people, because everyone wants to live in a neighbourhood which looks clean, which looks nice, which looks cared for.”
On the borough’s many parks, Cooper also feels the council isn’t “taking care of them properly”.
“In all of these green spaces around here, there’s loads of litter, there’s loads of rubbish everywhere,” he says. “We need to invest more in our green spaces because those are the places where our children, where our future, grow up.”
The crime rate in Barking and Dagenham is below the London average, with 94.7 crimes per 1,000 people compared to 100 per 1,000 capital-wide.
But Cooper says that borough residents often tell him they feel unsafe.
“We have those conversations with people, with mothers and people who have children, and they tell us that they don’t feel safe on the streets,” he says.
“They feel that their kids are being roped into increasingly illegal activities because there’s nowhere else for them to go.”
He adds: “I think a lot of it is antisocial behaviour from young people, but I don’t think it’s their fault particularly.
“I think it’s the fact that in the borough there are simply not enough third spaces for people to go, especially young people who are causing a lot of antisocial behaviour and perhaps loitering around corners at night time, which may make people feel unsafe.
“I think it’s that sort of stuff which could be directly combated with more community enforcement and better third spaces for our young people.”
Finally, on housing, the Green Party’s local manifesto takes aim at what it calls “the council’s failed strategy”.
It accuses the council of making “risky housing investments driven by arms-length companies” that “have mired the council in debt and left it teetering on the brink of bankruptcy”.
Labour council leaders often speak proudly of the council’s housebuilding programme, which accounts for the vast majority of the town hall’s £1.6billion debt.
They say it has built 3,700 homes, and that income from rents and sales have brought “significant returns” that cover the debt and subsidise the council’s budget.
But Cooper claims the homes the council has built are not “really affordable” and says it should have built more for social rent. He also claims they’re poor quality.
He said: “It’s simply shocking how little social housing provision that this borough has delivered from a Labour council.”
“And that’s not to mention the quality,” he adds, claiming a resident had shown him pictures of mould and leaks in one of the council’s new-build flats.
The Green Party’s environmental pledges include a crackdown on commercial fly-tipping and more enforcement officers, more regular street cleaning, and free bulky waste collections once a fortnight.
They say they’ll improve street lighting in residential areas, make community policing “more visible” and “push for additional funding for youth support services”.
On housing, the party’s manifesto says it wants to improve waiting times for repairs and insulation in public homes. Cooper also speaks of building more social housing.
All of this costs money, and comes as the council’s current budget projections envisage having to find £85m of savings over the next five years.
Councils across the country – including Barking and Dagenham – face rising costs and demand for special educational needs, social care and temporary homeless accommodation.
Cooper says a Green-led council would “work with the national government” on these issues, while also seeking external grant funding and bursaries.
He said: “I do think we need to get those grants, sometimes even borrow, to be able to fund things which make people’s lives better.
“That in turn will mean that more people are in work, fewer people are unreachable.”
Cooper believes the Green Party can pose a real challenge to Labour in the elections on Thursday, 7th May. The LDRS is aiming to interview candidates from all parties.
Labour currently holds 47 of the 51 council seats. The Green Party is standing for 36 of them.
“We don’t want to be too ambitious,” Cooper says. “We’re an insurgent party, we’re very recently gaining support in areas where we’re campaigning.
“We think that depending on how many seats we get and how many seats other parties get, there is an opportunity for us to get a lot more bargaining power than other people may think”.
Cooper also thinks the Greens pose an alternative to Reform UK, which is standing a full slate of 51 candidates.
“We feel like the people of Barking and Dagenham don’t want a Reform council,” he says. He recalls the time when the far-right British National Party (BNP) won twelve seats on the council in 2006, only to lose them all in 2010.
“I grew up in Valence ward and when I was born we had a BNP councillor.
“I was very young when I saw what was happening on the streets of the borough. We had the Hope Not Hate canvassers who believed in a movement which could kick the far-right out of Barking and Dagenham.”
He adds: “I think Reform embodies the same things as that BNP opposition did back in 2006 to 2010.
“I think there’s going to be a lot of people who believe that Labour is bad but Reform is worse and they’re going to go to the Greens for the first time ever.
“I think a lot more people than others may expect are going to put their faith in us to deliver for them.”
