12 April 2023

Swale Green Party has announced its candidates to stand in the 4th May local elections. A total of 13 Greens are to stand across 12 wards in the Swale Borough Council elections.

The local Green Party also called for Swale Borough council and the government to sign up to a new Right Homes, Right Place, Right Price Charter to beat the housing crisis and ensure green spaces are protected. [1]

We are delighted to unveil our team of fantastic Green Party candidates ready to represent communities across Swale in the council elections on Thursday 4 May!

When you VOTE GREEN on Thursday 4 May, you will help to elect hardworking councillors committed to making Swale a fairer, greener community.”

The full list of candidates is below.

On the Green Party’s Right Homes, Right Place, Right Price Charter, local councillor, Rich Lehmann, said:

“We need councillors and national government to work together to deliver the homes people need and can afford to rent and buy, where people need them. “What we need is local councils supported to build quality, affordable housing in the right places where people live and work, with the right supporting infrastructure and local facilities.

“The Green Party’s Right Homes, Right Place, Right Price Charter will simultaneously protect valuable green space for communities, reduce climate emissions, tackle fuel poverty and provide genuinely affordable housing.

“Local communities in Swale are facing the same problems as much of the rest of the country - developers being allowed to build houses local people often can’t afford and failing to ensure local services like buses and GP surgeries get the investment they need.

“Developers are being allowed to ride roughshod over the needs of communities and the environment and this has got to stop.”

The Charter would also provide greater protection for renters, as local Green Party councillor/spokesperson explained:

“Residents here in Swale are experiencing the same problems as people up and down the country - homes that are unaffordable to buy, unaffordable to rent and unaffordable to heat. There is a generation of people who are trapped in the private rental market by spiralling rents that bear no relationship to incomes.

“To address this, in the short term, the Green Party would introduce an immediate rent freeze and eviction ban to prevent people being made homeless in the middle of this cost of living crisis, as the Scottish Greens have already done as part of the Scottish Government. 

“In the longer term, the Green Party would give councils the power to bring in rent controls in areas where the housing market is overheated. We would also place much stricter controls on the type of new homes being built to include more affordable and social housing for buying and renting.

“Everyone deserves a place that they can call home. That is why the Green Party’s Right Homes, Right Place, Right Price Charter will deliver the change we want to see across the housing sector and create fairer, greener communities.”

 

The Greens’ Right Homes, Right Place, Right Price Charter would:

• End the housing crisis by creating enough affordable homes – including 100,000 new council homes a year built to the Passivhaus or equivalent standard

• Empower local authorities to bring empty homes back into use

• Transform the planning system to:

• Incentivise renovation and improvement of existing buildings to reduce the environmental impact of new construction

• Incentivise local authorities to spread small developments across their areas, where appropriate, rather than building huge new estates

• Protect valuable green space for communities

• Require new developments to be accompanied by the extra investment needed in local services, such as providing extra school and GP places and better bus services

• Transform building regulations to ensure: 

• all new private and public sector housing meets Passivhaus or equivalent standards

• house builders include solar panels and heat pumps on all new homes

• Ensure all new developments will be located and designed to ensure that residents do not need cars to live a full life

• Introduce rent controls 

• End no-fault evictions 

Full list of candidates:

East Downs - Terry Thompson

Boughton & Courtenay - Alastair Gould & Rich Lehmann

Teynham  & Lynsted - Janet Bott

Watling - Oliver Heyen

Sheppey Central - Samantha Banks

Bobbing, Iwade & Lower Halstow - Carol Goatham

Sheppey East - David Walton

Priory - Sonia Jackson

Minster Cliffs - Josephine Galvin

Murston - Miriam Layton

Chalkwell - Hannah Temple

Roman - Debra Blacklock

 

Notes 

1 The number of households in England is projected to rise from 23.2 million in 2018 to 26.9 million in 2043 – an average increase of around 150,000 households per year. (ONS, Household projections for England, 2018-based: Principal projection dataset, 29 June 2020). According to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ ‘English housing survey 2021–22’, 4.6 million households (19%) rent privately; 4 million households (17%) rent from a social landlord, and 65% of households in 2021–22 were owner occupiers These comprised 35% who owned their home outright and 30% with a mortgage.

2  The Green Party currently has 563 councillors on 172 principal authority councils in England and Wales. It will be defending 281 seats in this year’s local elections in May and will be looking to make further gains across the country. 

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