Labour will establish a Community Wealth Building Strategy for local prosperity. When awarding contracts, we’ll consider the overall benefit to our community.

We’ll target investment on high-skilled jobs and to help young people be job-ready. We’ll support community owned businesses and co-operatives.

A Labour Council will promote the benefits of Union membership. Workplaces with unions are safer and have higher pay. Employers benefit from well-motivated staff and higher customer satisfaction.

Local people have little real say on major planning decisions; too often they are ‘done deals’. Labour will rebuild trust in the process by involving communities early on. We will review planning delegation so that key decisions are made by elected councillors rather than officers.

The Council doesn’t regulate large infrastructure, but can influence for good. The Council must push for a stronger green focus at the outset and seek better mitigations as decisions are made e.g. East-West Rail and moving the Waste Water Treatment Plant.

A Labour Council will:

★ Stop investing in office buildings and instead focus on projects that benefit the community such as renewable energy generation and leisure facilities.

★ Add good practice endorsements to ‘Visit South Cambs’ e.g. Ethical Accreditation and ‘Safer Spaces Kite Mark’ (welcoming the LGBT community).

★ Negotiate a comprehensive Trade Union Facilities agreement with relevant public sector unions. Endorse the TUC’s ‘Stay Safe, join a Union’ initiative.

★ Decide development sites based on community needs. Support residents to be involved as much as possible in the earliest stages of planning discussions.

★ Strengthen Building Control rather than companies monitoring themselves.

★ Link good employment practice to Council contracts, insisting on jobs and apprenticeships for local people.

★ Use licensing powers for the good of the community e.g. on alcohol licences and street traders, balancing the need for a healthy social scene with preventing anti-social behaviour.

★ Update Community Grants to include education e.g.‘Hope not Hate’.

★ Take a stand against men’s violence against women and join the four other Cambridgeshire Councils who have ‘White Ribbon’ accreditation.

Promoted by Michael Tierney on behalf of South Cambridgeshire CLP all at Alex Wood Hall, Norfolk Street, Cambridge, CB1 2LD.