I'm standing for the Conservatives in the West End ward by-election on Thursday, 19 September. This is my Diary of a By-Election Candidate.
"We're back with Diary of a Candidate with me here in the West End. I wasn’t expecting to necessarily restart this series quite so soon after the general election, barely a month ago. But we now have a by-election in the West End caused by one of the Labour councillors resigning as they were elected to the House of Commons in a general election just six weeks ago.
"There are a huge number of issues to get stuck into here based on the failings that Labour really has had since they controlled Westminster City Council two years ago. And, with the Mayor of London, they've combined to really drop the ball on a variety of issues. They failed to take advantage of the legislation that the Conservatives campaigned for and successfully achieved to help regulate and license pedicabs.
"They brought in their own rules in Westminster for e-bikes, in assembling huge pools of e-bikes without them necessarily being in any way better managed. As a result, they are clogging up roads and pavements everywhere. Certainly, in the West End, we've seen a drop in some of the standards and the regularity of rubbish collection. There are issues to do with street lighting that hasn't been put into place and promised CCTV that hasn't been delivered, that have all contributed to crime.
"And much in the same way as the Mayor of London has increased the salaries of his senior advisers, we saw the Labour group on the council increase their allowances for their elected members, but in both cases with no appreciable sense of improvement in services. In fact, all the services have gone backwards. The Mayor has failed to, start the number of affordable homes that he needs to, he needs about 3,000 a quarter.
"And in the last quarter, he only delivered 150. We've seen the Met Police, so another thing, the Mayor is responsible for, recently graded by His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary as inadequate when it comes to investigating crime. Surely the most fundamental element of policing! And so wherever you look, we're seeing Labour pushing up costs, paying more to public sector workers, which isn’t in itself necessarily a bad thing.
"But it is when there's no improvement of standards, and there's no improvement of what can be delivered. It's exactly the same with the national government. and the train drivers strike. Some of the junior doctors, all of the things that were being campaigned for to improve the quality of services and the ability to deliver public services effectively and efficiently, have all been thrown out of the window.
"They just given them the money, pushed up the costs, and things aren't getting any better. So that's why I'm standing in the West End this time round. I want to represent the people here, and I want to make sure that there is a voice that is able to say to Labour at every level, at the council level, at the mayor’s level, at the government level, that this isn't good enough and that we need to improve things.
"That's why I hope you'll vote for Tim Barnes on Thursday, 19 September. Thanks, everybody."
