Tories Plough Ahead On Green Belt Land

In a press release issued today the Hillingdon Labour Group has accused the Tory led Hillingdon Council of unnecessarily building on valuable Green Belt land when suitable brownfield sites in the Council's ownership are available.

 "After the Central & South Planning meeting on 5th March 2013 no one should be in any doubt that the Labour Group in Hillingdon believe that every child in Hillingdon deserves a decent school place and that where we differ from the Conservative administration is that we consider our parks, open spaces and common land to be priceless, whereas they consider them to be worthless.

 Petitioners, Ward Councillors and John McDonnell MP highlighted different aspects of why the Green Belt site of Lake Farm Country Park and Botwell Common should be protected from development.  There were strong arguments put forward that demonstrated that the additional school places required could be provided without the need to build a new school on this site, if the political will was there to do so.

 Objectors mentioned the proposals for a new 4 form of entry primary school at the nearby Guru Nanak Academy and a proposed new 2 form of entry primary school at Hewens College, but the committee did not take these into consideration.

Other suggestions that were offered up for consideration, and also turned down, were to allow Rosedale Primary school to expand and also to make use of the old Hayes swimming pool site that the Council is selling off to a property developer. 

So the decision to plough ahead with proposals to build on this piece of common land in the Green Belt comes down to a political decision made by the administration, based on the fact that they own the site, so the land will cost them nothing.

After the meeting Cllr Peter Curling, Leader of the Labour Group, said

 “As the meeting went on it became very clear that the additional primary school places equating to 3 forms of entry could be accommodated without the need to pour concrete over Lake Farm Country Park.

 We, in the Labour Group, fully sign up to ensuring that every child has a decent school place and tonight it was demonstrated that this could be achieved without the need to destroy Lake Farm, so the proposal to build a school there is clearly driven by a political decision, rather than educational need.

What we are seeing is a Tory administration cashing in on the sale of Brownfield sites and then building on Green Belt land within their ownership.  This is more to do with money than children's education, and it shows that the Tories consider open Green Belt land to be worthless, whereas we consider it to be priceless.”

New Hillingdon Labour Group Leader first statement

Councillor Peter Curling

On 8 May 2012 Councillor Peter Curling, one of three Labour ward Councillors for Townfield, was elected Leader of the Hillingdon Labour Group. A few days later Councillor Curling wrote for the Uxbridge Gazette:

"For every day since this Tory led Government took office, 625 public service jobs have been axed bringing untold hardship to countless families. On 3^rd of May we saw people throughout the country go to the polls and express their deep dis-satisfaction with the Tory led Government resulting in Labour making huge gains up and down the country.  The London Mayoral result came down to the big “marmite” personalities of Ken & Boris, rather than the usual party politics and the Boris Bounce was just enough to push him back into the Mayoralty, more a victory for “Boris” brand than an endorsement of the Conservatives.

The election of the GLA Assembly Members saw Labour overturn a 28,000 Tory majority here in Ealing and Hillingdon where Dr Onkar Sahota replaced the former Deputy Mayor, Richard Barnes.  The London-wide party list candidates also saw a huge swing to Labour.  This now means that although Boris is the Mayor of London, the assembly has a majority of Labour members. Unfortunately it’s not the two thirds majority required to kerb the Mayor’s actions or amend the Mayor’s budget, but it does mean that there are more Labour members on the assembly to scrutinise and hold the Mayor to account.

Looking at local issues I am sure that a significant factor to the swing to Labour in Ealing & Hillingdon was the government’s plans to close Ealing Hospital as part of the top down reorganisation of the NHS that David Cameron specifically promised not to do.  So how fitting it is that the winning Labour candidate is a Doctor who is committed to supporting and defending the NHS. Labour is the only party that supports our great British institutions, like the NHS, the only party who will keep our public services public.

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Labour campaigning to save Ealing Hospital

The Tory led coalition abandoned their mantra of “we’re all in it together” (if we ever believed it!) when they decided to cut the tax of the wealthiest and richest in our society whilst mercilessly cutting benefits and life-lines to some of the poorest and most vulnerable.  They have reverted to type and taken a deeply unfair approach to our economic problems, their policies of tax cuts for the rich and increasing the burden on the poor have clearly failed.

The recent elections have sent a strong message to the government; The country has had enough of Tory austerity, of out of touch and no hope policies that have dragged us back into recession.  We want to prove that in tough times you can depend on Labour to fight for you, we will put residents first and we are determined to prove that in the coming months.