North East Hampshire Labour Party
What will Labour do in Government nationally?
Click here to see our Missions for Government.
Click here to view and download the 24-page document explaining our Missions in more detail.
Elections 2024 – Hart District Council, Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council
Elections for District and Borough Councils, as well as Police & Crime Commissioner, will be held on Thursday 2nd May 2024. Postal votes are being sent out from mid-April. This is your chance to show your support for Labour, not just locally but when the votes and councillor numbers are added up across the country and demonstrate the unpopularity of this incompetent government and the failure of Tories at all levels to call out its corruption, sleaze and disregard for the people of this country. Your vote will provide inspiration across the Labour movement to work even harder towards a Labour government at the next General Election.
The deadline for registering to vote in these elections is 16th April. You can do so at www.gov.uk/register-to-vote. You need only provide your date of birth, address, and National Insurance (NI) number.
To obtain a postal vote if you do not already have one, you must first register as above, then go to www.gov.uk/apply-postal-vote , and submit your application before 5pm on 17 April.
Our candidates
Your Labour candidate for Police and Crime Commissioner is Becky Williams.
Your Poll card or Postal poll card will show which ward you are in towards the top, in the text “Election of councillors to Hart District Council [or Basingstoke & Deane] for the <ward name> ward.” Click on the name of your candidate below to see more about them and what they will do for you.
Blackwater and Hawley: Carly Bidwell
Bramley: Adam Coulthard
Crookham East: Mike Mellor
Fleet Central: Andrew Perkins
Fleet East: Valmai Wainhouse
Fleet West: Zach Seth
Hartley Wintney: Alex Christie
Hook: Amanda Affleck-Cruise
Odiham: Ben Jones
Yateley East: Robbie Wiltshire
Our Campaigns
Petition to Support Hart Foodbank
The Hart Foodbank charity was being charged £450 a month by Hart District Council for storage space in the old Fleet town centre toilets. This was money that could otherwise be used to feed the neediest in our community – arguably the responsibility of local or national government. Local churches are providing distribution space but the Foodbank also needed storage space. By operating in Hart, the Foodbank is saving money for Hart District Council (and its council tax payers), and saving it the embarrassment, in this area of relative wealth, of having its residents go short in their basic and urgent need for food. We found it appalling that Hart was taking resources from this charity.
We raised an online petition to Hart District Council to highlight this and to demand action. Hundreds of residents signed it. This resulted in Hart agreeing to consult with the Foodbank, and making a £10,000 grant to the Foodbank. The Foodbank manager told us that our petition led directly to this, and thanked us for our action.
Other parties rushed to claim the credit for that grant, but were notably absent in this matter the next year. It fell to Labour to pressure the council again in 2023, and obtain another grant.
Preventing health cuts by Hampshire County Council
Conservative-dominated Hampshire Council proposed massive cuts to health services in 2021, at a time of huge need. We in Labour campaigned through social media to make sure that as many people as possible responded to the consultation – and you the residents of Hampshire stepped up and provided a huge response. The Tories were forced to back down on the cuts.
The “Shapley Heath new town”
The “Shapley Heath new town” is much discussed on social media, online, and in political leaflets. There has been considerable misinformation and misunderstanding on the topic, including the promotion of a figure of 10,000 houses to be built in a new town at Shapley Heath, between Winchfield, Hook and Fleet.
The situation at present is that there is no current plan which gives detail on a development of the rumoured 10,000 houses, or even 5,000, in the Shapley Heath area.
In this situation, we must make clear our position on new housing. Housing development must:
- Provide communities with truly affordable (whether purchased or rented) and appropriate homes, of excellent quality, built to last
- Enrich life for current residents – for instance by providing better leisure opportunities and more/better essential services such as GP surgeries, schools, local shops
- Respect wildlife and the environment, especially rare and important habitats
- Provide green travel options: proper footpaths, cycleways, and public transport
- Contribute to net zero carbon goals, for instance by producing and using renewable energy wherever possible
It appears to us that, while there are many people with valid concerns, the issue of a new settlement has also been used as a political football by the Conservatives in Hart for some time, in an effort to find an issue on which they can divide the electorate and gain back the control they lost of HDC some years ago. They have not proposed a full evidence-based solution to the problem of housing in Hart.
The Planning Background in Hart
Every council is obliged to have a current approved plan for housing. If no such plan is in place, then developers can (and do) easily and successfully appeal against planning decisions, thereby building willy-nilly across the countryside and our villages and towns.
Up until 2022, the Conservative government set a mandatory minimum number of homes for each council’s plan. In Hart, this amounted to an additional 5,000 homes over a ten-year period.
At the end of 2022, the government reversed this and made the target numbers “advisory” in an effort to stem their rapid losses in the polls.
HDC (Hart District Council) currently has an approved plan for housing, but needs to refresh the plan for 2024. They say that they hope to have no increase in housebuilding required, but that it is prudent to have a plan with “robust supporting evidence” which could be used, if necessary, to take account of future targets from a higher tier of government.
A “new settlement” is one of several options, along with “Urban expansion” (bolt-on estates on the edges of towns and villages) and “Urban intensification”: development within towns and villages.
We have provided our input into the process, and we eagerly await the proposals from HDC for the 2024 plan, and look forward to having our say – which we can make much more effectively if Labour candidates are voted in as Hart Councillors!