Our Local Contract with Wales

Propel is pleased to present its contract for the local council elections on May 5th: our Local Contract with Wales 2022

Our local communities are crying out for a can-do, common-sense approach, with more transparency and accountability in local government.

After a difficult two years, Welsh communities are emerging from the restrictions of the pandemic, into rapid change and uncertainty.
Rapid rises in the cost of fuel, increases in Council tax and inflation mean that many are now struggling to make ends meet.

There are clear challenges out there facing our communities. Propel proposes to deal with the issues of 2022 head on with our Local Contract with Wales 2022.

General Council Management

• Any Propel supported Council’s will carry out an independent root and branch review and restructure of the
  Council’s management, without fear or favour. Savings made will be diverted to frontline services.
• Propel pledges to rule out any real term increases in Council tax, without making cutbacks to essential services.

Council Financial Generation

As well as spending money, Councils should generate money.

Propel proposes:

• Council owned child contact centers to generate valuable revenue as well as improved control of the service.
  Develop local government public/private partnerships to build whisky distilleries, providing jobs, income and revenue from exports. if possible corporate partners for this venture.
• Develop local public / private partnerships to exploit Wales gas reserves without fracking.
  Wales currently imports gas from Norway, Europe, Qatar and Russia. Exploiting Wales’ methane reserves will cut bills, create jobs and cut Wales’ carbon footprint.

Housing

Propel proposes to:

• Build truly affordable Council housing, using capital from local government pension funds. This would be a safe investment, with pension funds gaining immediate, sustainable income, along with assets increasing in value.
• Build new housing primarily on brown field sites, using empty retail and office space also.
• Turn empty houses into viable homes, offering landlords loans to renovate, or, as a last resort, compulsory purchase.
• Create arm’s length private companies to build/purchase houses, with a view to enabling first time buyers to get on the property ladder.
• Address the cladding scandal. Developers refusing to put properties right will be excluded from partnership with local authorities. A legal fighting fund will be set up by any Propel supported Council.
• Housing first policy. Charities are not always the right partners to provide supported housing, Propel would re-orientate from charities to local authority providing small scale supported housing.
• Work to preserve local, Welsh identity, by greatly increasing the cost of changing Welsh house names to non-Welsh names.
• Promote equality for minority time resident parents in housing provision, so that parents who have care duties for children are not only able to apply for one bedroom accommodation, with Bedroom Tax adjustments.
• Implement the Welsh Government’s 2012 Code of Guidance so that veterans will be prioritised in housing allocations schemes, and could also easily access support with any issues, such as PTSD, caused by their time in service.

Children’s and Adult Services

Families are currently being failed by Children’s and Adult services. Assistance frequently takes the form of draconian interventions in families, and life changing decisions are often made by inexperienced professionals, who sometimes lack understanding or empathy for the issues faced by the families they work with.

Propel proposes to:

• Stop adoption for profit and create Keeping Families Together agencies, with an emphasis on providing holistic family support, to replace adoption agencies Create local Mentorship schemes, offer expanded parenting courses, home helps, and even supported housing, for parents who oppose adoption.
• Create a Sponsorship scheme, to fastrack experienced professionals from other fields into social work, to give broader perspectives.
• Launch a national review and forensic investigation into Children’s Services in Wales, beginning Council by Council Councils cover the cost of change in bedroom Tax status, when children are removed from parents.
• Improve the mental and physical wellbeing of adult social care users, by creating activity venues.

Community

• Green space is essential for the planet, for biodiversity, and plays a valuable role in mental wellbeing, for our communities.

Propel pledges to:

• Protect areas of green in communities, and encourage the community’s use of local green spaces.
• Make Wales a Bee Friendly country, county by county. Bees and pollinating insects are essential for growing crops, but they are threatened by climate change, disease, loss of habitat and the use of powerful insecticides by agriculture. This must change.
• Commit to promoting road safety initiatives, especially in the vicinity of schools. A crossing person would be provided for every primary school, and additional road safety precautions would also be explored.
• Commit to community asset transfers, where a clear benefit to the local community is the likely outcome.
• Make the burial process more efficient, to comply with the requirements of non- Christian faiths.
• Launch cashless home and community improvement hubs and co-op’s – to enable fair exchange of materials, skills and labour within our communities.

Environment and Planning

Propel proposes to:

• Reclassify housing land to agricultural land to protect green fields.
• Revoke unpopular local development plans.
• Green infrastructure, by growing suitable plants on public infrastructure to assist with creating better biodiversity and cleaner air.
• Double allotment provision in each local authority: Propel is committed to making Wales a food independent nation.

Education

Propel proposes to:

• Ensure supply staff are paid a fair wage.
• Provide central resources for parents choosing to educate at home.
• Reverse Labour’s privatisation of out of school tuition county by county.
• Make schools centres of the community, to provide extra decentralised services such as community meals, youth centres and meeting spaces for third age people.
• Introduce a voluntary subject teacher exchange programme between schools and colleges in different parts of Wales.
• Publicise and invest in Welsh immersion to allow transfer into the Welsh-medium sector.
• Respect cultural differences in diet in all educational establishments. At least one suitable food option for people observing a Halal, Kosher or vegetarian diet must be provided where there is demand.
• Provide for Heritage Languages (Urdu, Bengali, Gujrati, Somali, Arabic) to be taught to a GCSE level in Secondary schools where there are significant number of children with mixed heritage and demand can be shown.
• Incorporate the British Sign Language charter into the education system in Cardiff, and support all deaf children to achieve their full potential.

Recovery After Covid

Propel proposes to:

• Create food growing cooperatives for new local farmers’ markets.
• Social Mobility Fund to sponsor the brightest students through A levels and beyond.
• In kind currency for local councils to pay for voluntary action.
• Decentralise recycling, creating not for profit community enterprises.
• Regenerate town centres by ensuring long term empty properties are brought back to life. This would be done by negotiation or ultimately compulsory purchase.
• A source locally policy county by county.
• Negotiate schemes whereby major employers demonstrate corporate social responsibility by contributing positively to the community.
• Seek Welsh Government legislation to give Councils the power to implement a hotel bed levy.
• Attracting the top graduates from Welsh universities in a Council graduate scheme.
• Free bus travel in Wales.

Best wishes

Neil McEvoy

Propel Leader