19 Nov 2024
Harpenden Conservative councillor Matt Cowley reveals why he thinks the Harpenden parking fiasco shows that local Lib Dems don’t respect the electorate…
The Liberal Democrats have run St Albans City and District Council since 2019. They have held more than 80 per cent of its councillors since 2022. They would like you to believe that since those dates, everything good the council has done was because of their brilliant work; and everything bad the council has done was because of someone else.
They expect you to believe this unquestionably. As I have discovered at council, they often get very angry at the suggestion that this is not true. But it simply isn’t true.
Because politics is about choices. Hard choices. And a council – and a political party – that respects the public respects them enough to acknowledge that sometimes it doesn’t get everything right.
What the Harpenden on-street parking charge fiasco has laid bare is a simple truth at St Albans district council: the Lib Dems do not respect you.
They didn’t respect you enough to consult you before their plans for parking charges were agreed at Budget. They didn’t respect you enough to have an honest conversation with you before you went to the polls in May’s district council elections about their plans to introduce parking charges.
They don’t respect you enough to listen to you when you make your voice heard at the ballot box. With councillors simultaneously arguing that you voted for their plans to bring in parking charges in May; but that it isn’t clear that votes in Harpenden North and Rural voted against parking charges in October when they gave the Lib Dems a bloody nose in what had become a safe seat for them.
They don’t respect you enough for the leader of the council to have prepared sufficiently to know the figures from the parking accounts at Full Council – despite the question being asked as a supplementary to a pre-submitted question on those same accounts.
Accounts which, for what it is worth, show the Council made a £40K profit when comparing direct income from parking against direct costs in the most recent year available.
They don’t respect you enough to be honest about the council’s financial position. Hiding behind “Conservative cuts” when their own figures lay bare that the council has had a real
terms increase in its core spending power since they took office in 2019.
They didn’t respect you enough to apologise for the distress that the parking charge proposals have caused people and independent retailers in Harpenden at the most recent Full Council.
And they didn’t respect you enough to learn the lessons from this fiasco and agree to a public consultation on a future Budget.
They didn’t respect you enough to avoid pre-judging the consultation on the parking charges.
Whilst the council has tried to say they are open to listening, the leader said back in May: “It isn’t a consultation on whether we’re going to do it or not” – and so it has proven.
So honestly, I cannot say that I am all that surprised to learn that despite 95 per cent of residents objecting to the proposals, they haven’t respected you enough to listen to your views and cancel these parking charges.
Next year, we have county council elections in Harpenden. And already we see that the Lib Dems don’t respect you in their approach to these elections. Because after years of running leaflets featuring Liz Truss and Boris Johnson and arguing that you needed to vote Lib Dem at district elections to send a message to the Government; they are now telling you that you
shouldn’t think about their record at the district council when you cast your vote in May.
I think you deserve respect. I think you deserve a council that respects your ability to have an intelligent debate about the future of our town and our district.
I think you deserve a voice in the direction our district takes and the future of our public services. I think you deserve councillors who want to bring you into the room with them when they are making a tough decision; not lock the door behind them. I think you deserve better.
And that is what my Conservative colleagues and I will keep fighting for.
