Left Foot Forward spoke to Green Party cabinet members at four local councils

As recently as a decade ago, the Greens were a minor fixture in local politics. Then, Brighton & Hove was the first and only council where the Greens were the sole party in administration. After unprecedented success at each election since 2019, there are now 37 local authorities where the Green Party of England and Wales is part of the ruling administration. That includes Mid Suffolk, where the party took majority control of a council for the first time in its history.

At the Green Party’s recent conference in Brighton, Left Foot Forward spoke with four councillors who hold cabinet positions on these councils about the change they’ve been able to make, the challenges they’ve faced and how they square being a part of a party seeking to make radical change in the age of austerity where local government funding makes that radical change incredibly difficult.

“It’s a steep learning curve, because a lot of us are new councillors as well as going straight into administration, so it’s been quite a ride and continues to be,” admits Toby Hammond, who holds the economic development and transport brief at East Suffolk District Council. The Greens went from five to 16 seats in East Suffolk in this year’s local elections, with the Tory vote collapsing.

Hammond adds: “We realised that there are some fantastic things that the officers are doing, lots of good things underway, but there are also levers we can pull to make a difference and change things. And it’s not a case of everything needs to be changed and torn up from the previous administration. It’s a case of where are the opportunities for us to change the direction slightly on some of these things that are happening.”

Rachel Millward is the new deputy leader of Wealden District Council and shares this assessment. She tells Left Foot Forward: “The thing is Wealden District Council has been Tory forever and ever and ever and so it’s the first time there’s been this kind of change. It’s very very clear that the electorate want change and so we sort of feel, here we go, we have an opportunity to do what people want and listen. So that all feels really positive.

“And obviously, that change also means a bunch of newbies, so it realistically means that you don’t have all that kind of organisational memory and traditions and habits deeply ingrained – things aren’t just a given. So the first step is absorption, becoming sponges and trying to take in how this council runs, how the whole thing operates, which none of us have seen from the inside before – some of us have been backbenchers, but only some. Because the change was so dramatic, there’s so many new councillors in cabinet.”

Both Millward and Hammond are in joint administration with the Liberal Democrats. Coalitions have a reputation of being unstable and riddled with inter-party conflicts. This isn’t, however, something either of them report. Instead, they speak of effective working relationships and relishing different approaches taken within their alliances.

Hammond says: “We do have different ideologies on some things. We think about things in different ways. So some of us are more inclined towards regulation and some of the Lib Dems are probably naturally more market orientated, for example. But I don’t see that as a bad thing. We probably end up in a good way at the end of the day.”

Millward is similarly enthusiastic about her working relationship with the Liberal Democrats. She tells Left Foot Forward: “We’re in coalition with the Lib Dems which is working very well. They’ve got 13, we’ve got 11, so, relatively balanced. And so I’m co-leading with their group leader. So he’s leader, I’m deputy this year and then we’re swapping – which is working really well. There’s a genuine spirit of collaboration”.

James Kennedy – a Green Party cabinet member on Warwick District Council – is in a slightly different position. In Warwick, the Greens are not in joint administration with the Liberal Democrats, but with Labour. While he agrees with Millward and Hammond that there is a good relationship with the Greens’ coalition partner, he admits that there are areas where there is the potential for tensions to emerge.

He says: “I think in my particular brief, there’s an interesting dilemma that we are committed as Greens to build as many new social houses as we can, as is the Labour Party. But we’re also committed as Greens that they all should be net zero carbon. With the balance I think that the Labour Party might say that numbers of social housing is more important than that they should all be net zero carbon and we’re saying it’s more important that they should all be net zero carbon than maybe particularly the numbers.

“We both want the same thing, but we’re both coming at it from slightly different angles. And that in the current state of funding and housebuilding is a real challenge and potentially I suppose there’s going to be tensions there. But I think that we can reach some sort of way of working together on that because it’s not say we don’t want to see more social housing, we absolutely do, and not that they don’t want to see net zero carbon – they do want to see net zero carbon, but that’s the sort of things that can be more difficult.”

The challenges of coalitions aren’t on Andrew Mellen’s mind. That’s because he’s the leader of Mid Suffolk Council – the only local authority in the country with a Green Party majority. As a result of this, many eyes are watching closely to see what the Greens in power alone looks like in practice.

“It has put a bit of a spotlight on us – there’s no doubt about it,” Mellen says. He adds: “We are really a complete outlier because we’ve got 70 per cent of the seats on our council. So, we didn’t just get a majority, we got a big majority. But that does put us in a really good position to implement some stuff without having to negotiate too much with other parties. Clearly we do want to get agreement on the stuff we do, but there’s an opportunity there for some good ideas to be put into practice.”

What are some examples of these “good ideas” that Greens in administration are in the process of implementing? Mellen says that in Mid Suffolk the Green Party has secured “£2 million set aside for home energy measures”, which will be used for “topping up people’s loft insulation and a few other quick and easy energy saving measures”. Kennedy, meanwhile, points to changing the lighting in a multi-story carpark, which he says “saves £35,000 a year and the investment repays itself over two or three years”. Millward says the new administration will be implementing a new local plan that will increase the amount of affordable housing in the area and ensure that they make “all the changes we can to get more social housing”.

Despite these claims of political achievements in the short time they have been in office, all the councillors Left Foot Forward spoke to were cognizant of the fact that the current context of local government is incredibly challenging. Britain has an incredibly centralised political system with few powers devolved to local government. Alongside this, local councils have suffered under 13 years of Tory austerity, meaning finances are incredibly squeezed and public services are creaking.

“We’re not going to be able to do what we want to do but rather have us there making every change we can make to help as many people as possible, to help nature as much as possible, than to have a party that frankly didn’t have that”, Millward says.

Hammond is similarly candid about the limitations they are operating under: “Some of us are idealists, and we can’t achieve all those ideals that we would like to – either because of austerity or because we’re only a district council. We only have certain levers we can pull. We’re only responsible for certain things. And we also have to be responsible with the budgets and with the trust that our residents have placed in us.”

“We’re probably one of the few councils that does have some reserves, so we can do stuff without having to massively raise council tax or go into debt or anything like that”, Mellen says, before conceding that “We can’t be like kids in a sweetshop and just spend, spend, spend”. He adds: “We’ve got to be very careful and targeted in the stuff we want to do. But things like trying to double the tree canopy cover in the district – that’s something we could really look to do in the next decade – and putting some stuff back in like sustainable transport, furthering some of the plans for walking and cycling – those opportunities are there for us because we’ve got a little bit of money we can spend on it.”

Kennedy warns of facing “difficult decisions” around Warwick’s finances after he claims the former Tory administration left a “fiscal hole” as a result of refusing to raise council tax. He says: “One of the things that […] we want to demonstrate, is not necessarily fiscal prudence, but we want a balanced budget and the medium term financial strategy needs to show that we’re managing the finances well, because I think as a progressive party, the Conservatives and others will be only too keen to pounce on any suggestion of financial profligacy.”

That last point may be crucial for the fate of the new Green administrations. Many – especially their political adversaries – will be hoping that the Green Party will prove to falter when in office. Greens across the country remember nervously what happened the first time their party took office in Brighton & Hove, with attacks on the council giving it a reputation for mismanagement that would keep the Greens out of office for years to come.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

Image credit: Matthew Phillip Long – Creative Commons

Comments are closed.