Horsted Ward
 
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John and Scooter
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Medway Council / Horsted Councillor
Voting in the Local Elections 2000
In the local elections on 4 May 2000 I was elected to serve on Medway Council (a Unitary Authority covering the Medway Towns area of Kent) as one of the two Councillors for what is currently called the Horsted ward. The other Horsted Councillor is Ron Hewett (pictured below).
This all came about as the result of the Rochester Airport campaign, and the support we residents received from the Conservative group, who were at that time in opposition on the local council. I discovered that (much to my initial surprise!) they turned out to be the most honest and resident-supportive political group we have within Medway. By early in the year 2000 it became evident that we needed someone who lived in this area to represent us on Medway Council, and it turned out that the best person for this was me of all people, mainly because of my track record in the Davis Estate Residents Association, Chatham (DERAC). I had never planned or wanted to go down this route, but in the end it had become clear that it was the most sensible way forward, so I stood for the seat (yes, I know that sounds funny!) as a member of a party I had previously thought was unlikely to be in tune with local needs and wishes. I was as surprised to find that I was wrong in this assumption as anyone else might be. It just goes to show that the label on the party doesn't tell you as much as you might expect, especially at local level. Anyway, between us Ron and I managed to achieve a very large "swing" from the Liberal Democrats who had held these two seats very safely for the past nine years. The results were as below:
The overall situation is not quite as good as it might have been, as we won just 38 of the 80 seats—exactly twice as many as the 19 seats the Conservatives held before the election but short of an overall majority. Unfortunately the other groups tend to gang up against us on important issues, such as the Rochester Airport issue, defeating our attempts to ensure we have, for example, a balanced budget for the first time in years. Fortunately we were able to secure a sustainable budget for the current year (2001 to 2002) and build into the base budget a reserve for essential (but sadly neglected until now) work such as dealing with the vast number of potholes in Medway roads, and doing a proper job too. Occasionally we can persuade one or both of the two Independent Liberal Democrats to vote with us, and in a tied situation the Chairman of a committee or the Mayor at full council has a casting vote. The first year (2001–2002) the Mayor was a Conservative (Cllr "Dickie" Andrews), which has helped our situation a few times; but of course that ended in May 2001 when a Labour Mayor (Cllr. Tony Goulden) took over. That first year was a heavy period of a steep learning curve, frequent meetings, briefings and constituency work, combined with a number of extra burdens from central government—particularly the enforced change to a cabinet-style council and a ward boundary review. What the future holds, well, who knows? The Rochester Airport situation still isn't fully resolved, even though we were able to compel the Council to allow a short-term (four years only) lease to the company that now runs it, still as an airport. Ron and I, along with the rest of the Conservative group, are determined to ensure that the residents' wishes are taken seriously; so maybe we can yet stop the planned closure of the airport for development purposes.
Just out of interest, here is a ward-by-ward "league table" of percentage turnout, also showing the political representation of each ward. By and large it's a complete mixture, but one factor is noticeable: all the wards represented by Labour Councillors are in the bottom half or so of the table, and all fall below the overall (i.e. average) turnout of 27·28%. Perhaps just as interesting is that the lowest turnout ward (Luton) is currently represented by the present mayor and a former mayor, though to be fair neither of them was in that position at the time of the elections.
I never thought that I would one day become a torch-carrying Tory!
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