Leicester Manifesto Launched

Leicester Independent Councillors Against Cuts (LICAC) say they would keep the promises they have made to the city and oppose all cuts to public services. This is the same pledge made by all 135 parliamentary candidates standing for Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), the coalition of which LICAC is a member, across the country.

Whilst all of the main parties have pledged to continue making cuts to vital public services, LICAC say they will work in coordination with the people of Leicester to ensure that Leicester receives the money that the city needs to improve the lives of ordinary people.

With the launch of their manifesto yesterday, LICAC make clear their commitment to lift thousands of people out of poverty. This will include immediately signing up to Unison’s Ethical Care Charter, which will see all care workers across the city employed by the Council (directly and indirectly) being paid fair wage on a decent contract, instead of the  zero hours contracts on which so many are currently forced to live.

Their 38 page manifesto demonstrates their commitment to eradicating poverty in Leicester. They support national campaigning efforts to immediately raise the minimum wage to a living wage of £10 an hour. (CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD MANIFESTO)

Former Labour Councillors, Barbara Potter and Wayne Naylor, both left the Labour Party last year to set up LICAC because they felt that was the only way to fight to save public services in their wards. Since then they helped organize a “People’s Budget” conference which involved them speaking to Leicester residents to determine what they wanted included in LICAC’s manifesto.

Coun Potter explained, “another of our priorities would to immediately reinstate childcare provision in Sure Start centres where this has been cut. This would go hand-in-hand with introducing local replacements for the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) for 16-18 year-olds staying on in education.”

Coun Naylor added, that LICAC would move to “restore full council tax rebates, to be funded from the £56 million the council has ferreted away in the bank (council reserves) not from council tax rises. We would then campaign with the people of Leicester for the Government to reimburse our city for the money that we collectively decided that we need in order to continue improving peoples lives.”

Government attacks to local Council funding are having a disastrous effect on the people of Leicester. With £85 million having already been cut from the city’s finances over the past four years, LICAC aim to reverse this damaging trend. They say that the Council must stand its ground and refuse to implement the Government’s austerity agenda. Proposals to slash a further tens of millions of pounds from the city’s already meagre budget is simply untenable.

Another hot issue for LICAC is the city’s housing crisis. Coun Potter explained LICAC’s plan to set up a compulsorily register of private landlords, and then to set-up council-run lettings agencies to tackle repair standards, high rents, over-occupancy, and the extortionate letting fees for private rented homes.

“What Leicester needs is a political group that is firmly committed to building council homes right now” say Coun Naylor. “We intend to use the councils’ borrowing powers for capital spending in order to build such council homes, while at the same time campaigning for the government to divert its subsidy for private developers to finance a mass programme of public housing.”

LICAC’s manifesto clearly differentiates itself from the Labour Party’s in a number of ways. Some of these differences include LICAC’s:

• Refusal to convert homeless shelters into social housing
• Not threatening to withdraw funding for Leicester’s children’s services (like our adventure playgrounds)
• Reversing the funding and staffing cuts for Council-run services
• Improving currently owned council properties, not selling them off for peanuts
• Not equating council housing with so-called affordable social housing (which is often unaffordable to most people).