“Labour-run Bradford Council is living in an ivory tower”

The Labour leadership needs to listen and work with other parties for the good of the district, says the leader of the Green Party Group on Bradford Council

As a councillor I often speak to people across our district who are absolutely fed up with our council. And who can blame them? 

Our district has faced embarrassment after embarrassment over the last few years. From children’s services being so badly run that the national government had to step in and take control of it away from the council and the closure of Bradford’s main bus station to delays to our flagship new city centre market and the dire financial situation the council finds itself in, it's just one thing after another. 

In the last budget, Labour councillors forced through big cuts to services and hikes to fees for a variety of services. Ilkley lost its household waste centre at Golden Butts and new fees have been introduced for parking permits. Greens voted against every single one of these proposals. We couldn’t approve residents paying more council tax for even less services. 

Even as the district moves into 2025, a year which is meant to be an opportunity for us to shine on the national and international stage, we are faced with the latest embarrassment – Bradford Live. This is the backdrop of the vote of no confidence at last week’s full council meeting. 

I hope it came as no surprise to the Labour Party that as leader of the Green Party on the council, I have long lost faith in its ability to run the council. I think I have been quite clear in my comments to local media over the last 12 months about this. 

But I do wonder why the Conservatives submitted this motion for debate. Despite over a decade of big problems at Bradford Council, Labour still has a majority of councillors and they can comfortably win any vote in the chamber – even if every opposition councillor votes against them. 

We also felt that the Conservatives were quick to point all of the blame at Labour, completely forgetting that the now former national government had drastically cut funding to all local councils across the country over the past decade. David Cameron and George Osborne imposed ideologically driven austerity on our country and on our district – and that austerity continued under all the Conservative prime ministers who came after them. 

Birmingham, Nottingham and Croydon are just a few of the councils that have filed a Section 114 notice – effectively declaring bankruptcy. The Conservatives are very quick to suggest that this is Labour councils being badly run. But Conservative-controlled Northamptonshire County Council was the first council to issue a notice this millennium when it ran out of money in 2018. The national government has also been watching Conservative-run Hampshire and Somerset county councils closely. Only last week Norfolk County Council warned it could go bust unless the government stepped in. Councils up and down the country are on the brink. 

The Conservatives have repeatedly claimed that this is all down to the financial mismanagement by Labour. But this is just not credible. If Labour ran the council well, which, to be absolutely clear, they have not, we would still face financial trouble. 

That said, one of the fundamental issues with the Labour administration in Bradford is their unwillingness to listen. They don’t listen to the public and they don’t listen to other councillors.

You only have to watch Labour councillors’ contribution to the recent debate. Councillor Imran Khan, deputy leader of the council, was very quick to lash out at all opposition parties for daring to challenge the administration. But that is exactly what the role of the opposition is, to hold the administration accountable for their actions and to challenge them to be better. You would think democracy and accountability were an inconvenience to Labour in Bradford

Councillor Susan Hinchliffe, leader of Bradford Council, and her cabinet seem to be completely unaware of the full scale of problems our council faces and the deep public mistrust of the council – particularly her administration. I have no idea how. The warning signs should be obvious. In May, Labour had their worst local election results in decades, worse than in 2012 when the Respect Party made big gains on the back of George Galloway’s by-election win. 

Looking to the future, Bradford Council is going to need councillors to work together more and across party lines if we are going to get through this. And that’s a fundamental principle of how the Greens work. No one party has a monopoly on good ideas.  

Councillor Rebecca Poulsen, leader of the Conservatives in the chamber, claimed repeatedly in press statements and in her speech on Tuesday that she wanted opposition councillors to come together. But if Bradford Conservatives were actually serious about cross party working, they would have contacted the other opposition councillors before sending their press release to the local paper. 

There are more non-Labour and non-Conservative councillors on Bradford Council than in recent memory. The Green Party now has 10 councillors, twice that of the number of Liberal Democrats and not far behind the Conservatives. We represent communities across the district from Addingham to Holmewood and, this year, councillor Ros Brown was elected as the first Green councillor representing Ilkley on Bradford Council. 

In the recent local and general elections, the public have sent a message that they want politics to be done differently. Our district deserves better and it’s about time politicians put politics aside and focused on tackling the issues we all face.