Cllr Matthew Nook is a councillor for 9 Elms Ward on Wandsworth Council. He’s Chairman of the Battersea Conservative Affiliation.
Think about residing in an space the place excessive streets are thriving, the place a brand new city centre is opening, and the place each time you stroll down the street you see new companies organising store and creating 1000’s of jobs. Think about an space which, only a decade in the past, was a derelict industrial wasteland however is now reworked right into a key a part of the UK economic system.
You’ll be forgiven for considering you had been transported again to a bygone period someday earlier than the web, earlier than concluding this place couldn’t probably exist in 2022. However you’ll be flawed.
For residents in 9 Elms, within the London Borough of Wandsworth, that is the present-day actuality. For many years, the enduring Battersea Energy Station lay deserted and decaying on the financial institution of the Thames.
However now, it’s the location of 1000’s of properties and tons of of retailers and companies which is able to create alternatives for folks to get on the housing ladder and construct their careers. These companies embrace Apple, whose choice to find their UK headquarters on the Battersea Energy Station is a giant vote of confidence in 9 Elms as a brand new centre of financial development.
The 9 Elms regeneration has already delivered London’s latest tube station for free of charge to the taxpayer, and can quickly boast a brand new well being centre and faculty for residents who pay the bottom common council tax within the nation.
The regeneration can be a rising tide that lifts all ships. Funding by builders and companies is supporting current communities throughout Wandsworth, by partnering with social enterprises, funding neighborhood enhancements, and dealing with faculties and employers.
At completion, the regeneration will create 25,000 everlasting jobs and houses for 20,000 folks, all in lower than a sq. mile.
You’ll be forgiven for concluding that no political get together or native council may oppose this – Europe’s largest regeneration – occurring on their patch.
I’m afraid you’ll be flawed once more. Astonishingly, Wandsworth’s new Labour-run council boycotted final week’s opening of the Battersea Energy Station.
For residents in 9 Elms, it is not going to be a shock that Wandsworth Labour is giving Europe’s largest financial regeneration the chilly shoulder. The regeneration is a key legacy of Wandsworth’s 44 years of Conservative management, and it’s a tangible instance of the Conservative values of innovation and social mobility in motion.
In distinction, native Labour councillors don’t care about financial development and spreading alternative. They refuse to harness the facility of personal sector funding to ship for residents.
As an alternative, they’re focussed on the implementation of a small-minded anti-regeneration ideology which is able to cut back funding, cease job creation, stop council tenants getting higher housing, and strangle the expansion of the native economic system. Even the GMB Union opposed their boycott, calling it ‘disrespectful’ to the 4,000 staff who helped restore the Energy Station.
Wandsworth Labour has persistently opposed the visionary 9 Elms regeneration because it started over a decade in the past. The reality is that the 9 Elms regeneration may solely be delivered by a Conservative council, working in partnership with the non-public sector and neighborhood teams.
The 9 Elms regeneration attracts a key political dividing line that exists throughout the UK.
Native jobs, funding, and neighborhood infrastructure, equivalent to practice stations, well being centres and faculties, are not often unpopular. Neither is the constructing of properties folks need to dwell in on brownfield websites.
However this will solely be delivered in partnership with the non-public sector. One thing that’s anathema to the brand new technology of Labour councillors in London and past.
It’s time for Conservatives in native authorities to take a stand towards Labour’s lack of ambition, seize the regeneration alternative, and make their space the subsequent centre of development and innovation.
