THE year in politics has been dominated by two major events – the elections in May and the decision to join the West Midlands Combined Authority.
On May 7 the Conservative Party enjoyed 36 hours of triumph on both the national and local stage as MP Karen Lumley defeated Labour Party candidate Rebecca Blake with an increased majority and then saw her Tory colleagues capture three seats from Labour and one independent seat in the local elections.
Redditch was not alone is seeing Tory success as the Conservatives surprised all the pundits, and perhaps themselves, by winning an overall majority in Parliament.
At a local level Labour retained control of the borough council by one seat.
However a feature of Councillor Bill Hartnett’s leadership has been his ability to forge alliances and in October, in an historic move, he led the council to join the West Midlands Combined Authority as an associate member.
This is a body created by the Conservative Chancellor George Osborne, backed by the town’s Conservative MP Karen Lumley, yet opposed by all but one of the borough’s Conservative councillors.
As a result Redditch will be in line for millions of pounds worth of investment once the finances are negociated and then released.
However local politicians presented a united front when early in December they expressed their dismay at the failure of the local health trust after it was branded ‘inadequate’ by health watchdogs and called for Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to investigate breaking up the Worcester-centred trust.
Meanwhile behind the scenes the Labour administration has pushed ahead with transforming local services, empowering council employees and with it improving the lives of local residents.
One example can serve: In one residential road in Studley, in Stratford district, a three seater settee and mattress were left outside a house for weeks waiting for the waste disposal company with the contract – Biffa – to remove it.
Biffa runs a perfectly adequate service but their teams work to a schedule and it was weeks before the outsized waste team visited to remove it.
In Redditch, under transformation, once informed, a council removal team would have come out straight away to dispose of it.
Transformation has seen similar positive results in housing, curbing anti social behaviour and tackling neighbour disputes.
