There’s a clear choice at Thursday’s elections. We will either see four more years of an incompetent Labour-run administration at Warrington Borough Council, with a track record of reckless borrowing and ever-increasing taxes to pay for their investment failures, or real change in the Town by electing Conservative councillors who will actually put hard working local people first.
The Conservative opposition group have worked tirelessly to hold Labour to account, exposing their losses in a start-up bank which has seen an impairment of £26m, losses in an energy company which went bust loosing £millions and losses in junk bond investments and property deals in Birmingham which fail to benefit anyone in Warrington. All of this is with public money and there’s no consequences when things go wrong - apart from that cost falling onto residents in the town. The £1.8bn debt is set to grow further and we now know the cost is £4.5million every month just to pay off the interest. Warrington Labour Councillors have done everything they can to avoid scrutiny, failing to secure sign off from their external auditors and when they do sign off it’s with criticism and an adverse report.
Meanwhile the Lib Dems say one thing and do the other, claiming they oppose building in the Green Belt but astonishingly their Group Leader votes in favour of more than 5,000 homes being built in the Green Belt. You simply can’t trust them to do the right thing locally when they act as Labour-lite.
Warrington deserves better. The Conservative Government is delivering improvements in Warrington schools, with every school now rated good or outstanding, record funding for Warrington’s roads, a new fleet of electric buses, reduced fares and more frequent services. Support for households to help with the cost of living comes from this Conservative Government via the Council and I’m certain Conservative Councillors will ensure efficiency in public spending to keep Council tax low, unlike Labour who’ve increased Council tax by more than 30% in the last 5 years.
By contrast with the current Council administration, Warrington residents will have the opportunity to re-elect our excellent Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner, John Dwyer, who over the past three years has actually delivered for local people: 322 more police officers taking Cheshire Constabulary to the highest Officer numbers in its history, reported crime down year on year, arrests up, charges up and response times down. Under his watch, Cheshire continues to be one of the safest places across England and Wales. John is the most qualified and experienced person for the job, being a former senior police officer himself, and I hope you’ll join me in backing him on Thursday to continue his brilliant work as Cheshire’s PCC.
