28 Jan 2025
Newly appointed leader of St Albans Conservatives group on the district council, Cllr Matt Cowley, casts a look at some of the key issues locally which he feels warrant further scrutiny…
Being elected to any office is a humbling experience. Your community has given you the opportunity to fight for them and make a real difference on the issues they care about.
Being elected as a Member of Parliament is the ultimate opportunity to tackle the issues that really matter for your constituents. You have the luxuries of time, access and platform that only exist in Parliament. You can raise any issue. Challenge anyone. And lead local and national conversations about the kind of country we want to live in – about the future of our communities and the choices we face.
That’s why it is so disappointing that our Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament in Harpenden and St Albans have decided to use their platforms to engage in the kind of “do as I say, not as I do” empty populist partisan politics that we’ve all gotten so tired of over the years.
Unfortunately, time and again, it is what we’ve come to expect from the Liberal Democrats in St. Albans District.
The latest example from our Members of Parliament is a particularly egregious piece of hypocrisy. Conservative-run Hertfordshire County Council, they tell us, is trying to hide budget cuts from the public.
“They need to come clean,” they cry.
Well, I have some good news for Victoria and Daisy. Hertfordshire residents can fill in a consultation on the Herts County Council budget online. You can find it here: https://www.hertfordshire.gov.uk/about-the-council/consultations/council-budget/have-your-say-on-budget-spending-2025-26.aspx
It even sets out the measures being proposed and the background for them.
On the other hand, when my Conservative colleagues and I brought a motion to the Liberal Democrat-dominated St Albans district council asking them to hold a consultation on this year’s budget, it was roundly voted down.
A consultation wasn’t possible. There wasn’t enough time. The details of the budget were in vouncil papers on the website and so a consultation wasn’t needed.
What a contrast.
And given Daisy and Victoria’s deep concern about the need for councils to “come clean” on budget cuts and be open with the public – you’d imagine they were outraged about the decision of their own district councillors to vote against a consultation? Of course not.
Because St Albans district council isn’t run by the Conservatives.
Politics is politics. I understand “the game” that gets played by politicians. The other side is always wrong. If your side did something wrong, that was the fault of the other side somehow.
But I think we’ve all had enough of it. I think it is time that politicians sought to raise the bar – to pursue a better politics. A politics where we can have an open and honest conversation with you about the tough choices that need to be taken.
So I would encourage you to give your views to Hertfordshire County Council on their budget. I would encourage you to scrutinise as forensically as you would like their budget papers and engage in the conversation they are having with you about the tough challenges facing our county.
And I would encourage Daisy and Victoria to use their high office and belief in the need for transparent, consultative budget-setting, and have a word with their Lib Dem colleagues at St Albans district council.
it would also be remiss of me not to address the elephant in the room that is the English Devolution White Paper that threatens to abolish the district council.
The Lib Dem leader of SADC talks in the St Albans Times about the county council leader’s desire for a single unitary authority that “lost out so badly”. He also talks in the same breath about the opportunities to put new housing elsewhere under a two or three unitary system.
I don’t have strong views on unitaries, but I find it astonishing that the leader can talk about unitary options and housing policy and ignore the fact that his opposition to a single unitary puts significantly more pressure on St Albans’ Green Belt – because the majority of the county’s housing targets are in the west, but the majority of the county’s land is in the east.
A west and east Herts model, for example, would mean St Albans having to take potentially 9.8 houses per square kilometre, rather than 6.1 houses under a single Herts unitary. And that’s just based on the law of averages. There is plenty of space elsewhere in the county for new towns and villages, for example. That space does not exist in west Herts.
If the leader wants to talk about advantages for reducing housing pressure from unitary, he should have a word with whoever was the Lib Dem leader of St Albans district who quashed a whole Herts unitary before Christmas.
