Scott Smith: Labour is letting Rossendale down

Cllr Scott Smith is the Leader of the Conservative Group on Rossendale Borough Council.

Anyone interested in a study of swing voters should join me on a street surgery in Rossendale. Our corner of East Lancashire has reflected the national result in all but one of the general elections held since its creation in 1983. Here, no candidate can take anything for granted for long.

Sadly, however, parliamentary success between 2010 and 2019 did not translate into Conservative control of Rossendale Borough Council. We came closest in 2021, when no party held an overall majority. Since then, the tide has turned: after Labour switched to all-out elections during the peak of its national popularity, the Conservatives now hold five of 30 council seats, with Labour on 20, the Greens three, with one councillor each for Reform and the local Community First group. The council has had the same Leader since 2011.

That longevity might be admirable were it matched by competence. Instead, the record of Rossendale’s Labour administration can only be described as calamitous. Most notorious remains the Empty Homes Scandal – a botched contract meant to bring derelict properties back into use across East Lancashire, for which Rossendale Borough Council was the accountable body. The deal left Rossendale taxpayers liable for every property in the scheme, even outside the authority’s boundaries. What began as a £4 million government grant became a £10 million millstone around the council’s neck – almost equivalent to its entire annual revenue budget.

Repeated procurement disasters have seen contractors go bust, delaying regeneration projects. Ageing leisure facilities have closed, with others rescued only by community groups.  There are no credible plans to replace lost amenities. Most damagingly economically, Labour has shown a seemingly determined lack of support for local businesses, to the extent that firms seeking to expand often find it easier to leave Rossendale than to grow here.

None of this is to talk Rossendale down. Nestled in the South Pennines, we boast beautiful countryside alongside industrial heritage and the most welcoming community I, as an immigrant from Scotland, no less, have ever come across. Many local employers have invested here for generations and our growing cultural and voluntary sector continues to thrive. To the credit of the last Conservative government, too, Rossendale enjoyed unprecedented levels of capital funding for regeneration. Rawtenstall, chosen in 2009 by the BBC as the backdrop for a zombie apocalypse drama, was last year named by The Times as one of the best places to live in the North West.

But talk to virtually anyone and the message is clear: these very real local success stories happen despite the council’s leadership, rather than because of it.

Rossendale’s Conservatives have long fought to change that. Though outnumbered in the council chamber, our experience and persistence have yielded results – most recently, succeeding in pressing the council to adopt a borough-wide Article 4 Direction to halt the unchecked spread of HMOs. We play our part in the national debate too, gathering over 1,700 signatures locally on the petition opposing the Chancellor’s cuts to Winter Fuel Payments.

Opposition in Rossendale is not for the faint-hearted. Labour councillors are quick to file standards complaints against anyone daring to criticise their record, let alone highlight their decisions in public, and I have quite literally lost count of the number filed against me. Residents tend to see through this and are generally grateful for holding those who spend their hard-earned cash to account.

Reform’s rise has added another dimension to local politics. The party won four of Rossendale’s five seats at this year’s Lancashire County Council elections and secured an overall majority at County Hall. There are issues, like HMOs, where Conservatives and Reform can and do work together. But with the reality of running a County Council clearly weighing heavily upon Reform already, some early decisions at County Hall have been both misguided and deeply unpopular. Standing up against those will be important for Conservatives here in Rossendale and across Lancashire.

The only thing likely to save the council’s Labour administration from a Section 114 notice is the prospect of local government reorganisation. On the present timetable, new “shadow” unitary authorities are due for election in 2027, coming into effect fully the following year. Rossendale seems almost certain to form part of a wider East Lancashire council – a change we Conservatives support given the inefficiency of the current two-tier system and Rossendale’s small size within it.

Those elections will be a moment of truth. But it is important to be realistic: the gulf between Labour’s record and its electoral results here demonstrate the importance of the national picture. If that brightens – and following this year’s Party Conference, it seems there is cause for cautious optimism – then we Conservatives will have an opportunity to build an even stronger Conservative team of councillors, rooted in our communities and determined to put our local council back in the service of the people it represents.

Residents, businesses, and volunteers here in Rossendale achieve incredible things daily, often despite the obstacles placed in their way by a tired Labour council. Our Conservative vision is for a council that gets off their backs and enables them to do more. We relish the fight to provide it.