Baroness O’Neill is the former Leader of Bexley Council.
On November 5th, I addressed my final Council meeting as Leader of the London Borough of Bexley, after 17 years, and 27 years as a Councillor. I’m proud to be the longest serving Leader of our Council, and one of the few women who have led a London Borough. I have had time to reflect on those 17 years, and there are so many things I am proud of.
At the heart of that is doing what we said we would do. I’m proud we have delivered every single manifesto commitment we have made to residents, since 2006, and through five terms, and that we have been re-elected time after time with large majorities, reflecting the trust Bexley residents put in us.
We’ve transformed services, we’re one of the few councils in London to have OFSTED rate our children’s services as “excellent” at two consecutive inspections, we’ve opened new libraries when other councils were closing them, and we worked with partners to transform health provision including campaigning for and delivering with the Conservative Government a world class cancer treatment centre in Sidcup – this was after the previous Labour Government closed the maternity unit and A&E department.
We worked with residents to get through the pandemic – within days of the lockdown, we had a network of volunteers up and running to deliver hot meals and essentials to vulnerable, elderly residents and a network of over 500 people who became community champions, helping get messages out their neighbours about how services would be delivered over this difficult period.
I’m proud too that we took on Bexley’s biggest ever recycling project, when we moved the council out of four different buildings in different parts of the Borough, and into one site, at no cost to taxpayers at all, and which resulted in the council departments working better together and reduced our running costs by over £2 million a year, which means we have saved taxpayers well over £20m since we moved in a decade ago. It also brought what was a famous local building, the home of the Woolwich Building Society, back to life from being derelict. It also created hundreds of new homes for local families and delivered a new GP practice too!
And we remain the only Council in the entire country that, when faced with having to save substantial amounts of money, voluntarily reduced the number of councillors as one of our first proposals.
I’m proud that many of our staff say how much they enjoy working for the council and come to work every day to deliver great services for our great residents.
And it’s the residents I think about most, all the people I have met over the years, the children whose lives have been transformed with the opening of new schools, the residents who have seen their old style faceless estates transformed into communities and who were able to enjoy their lives much more, or the letters and thanks we received from all those residents we helped during the pandemic.
I’m proud we kept our focus solely on our residents and spent all our time working for them and investing in the future of the Borough. And in the end, that’s all that matters, and that’s why I went into politics – for public service, and to help the communities we represent.
Now I look forward to developing my experience and continuing in public service in the House of Lords, where I will continue to highlight the successes of our Borough and my home. I wish Cllr David Leaf all the best as he takes over and leads Bexley to even more success in the years to come.
It’s been the honour of my life to serve Bexley as Leader of our Council, and I will never forget what we have achieved, together.
