• What We Stand For
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Local Government

Too often, people’s opinions about what happens in their area are ignored. Big developers and faceless bureaucrats have far more power than local families in deciding where new buildings go up, taxes we pay locally disappear into the Treasury and are spent elsewhere, and there’s a postcode lottery in too many public services without enough of a guarantee of the level of quality and care people will receive.

Communities are labelled as ‘broken’ by both the Conservative and Labour and there is a lot of empty rhetoric about how to fix things and improve social cohesion. At the moment, local communities aren't able to control how many second homes or large supermarkets are built in their area or whether gardens should be built over. Local health services have no local democratic accountability and so local people have no influence over what services are provided in their area.  

Liberal Democrats will do things differently, because we believe local people and families know best how things should be done in their area and understand that although there are problems to be tackled it is wrong to simply label inner-city communities as ‘broken’.

We will scrap all the ridiculously detailed targets the government sets, make sure local taxes are spent locally and give people a real say over things like their local NHS, neighbourhood policing and new housing.

Currently, just a quarter of the money spent locally is raised locally and without control over the money, there is little local power. Liberal Democrats will give communities the freedom and funding to fix any problems they do have and to become more sustainable and cohesive.