University Ward 2025 Summer Survey
Norfolk’s 2025 Local Elections have been cancelled.
This May, we were due to vote for new local councillors to represent us on Norfolk County Council. Unfortunately, the Labour government decided, without consultation, to cancel those elections to focus on its new reforms to local government, including the creation of a new regional mayor for Norfolk & Suffolk. While time will tell if these reforms will be worth it, I don’t think it’s fair to rob hundreds of thousands of people of the right to decide who should represent them. As a result of the government’s decision, the Labour Party has effectively given their current underperforming councillor here in University Ward another year in office.
Between cancelling elections, scrapping winter fuel allowance, maintaining ultra-low taxes on big banks and balancing the country’s books on the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable, I believe the first year of this Labour government has shown why it’s important to have strong, local opposition to hold truth to power going forward. While we won’t be going to the polls this year, we can still hold our local representatives to account. None of our current councillors even live here, but I try to be active in the community and have stood for local election for my home ward three years in a row.
I want to know how I can best do that in future, so please consider returning the attached survey, so I can best stand up for you and your priorities all year-round, not just at election time.
Thank you.
The Avenues 2024 Environment Survey
At the local elections and since many residents have brought up the state of the verges and trees here on the Avenues. What would you like to see happen?
Norwich Labour should hand back their £10k COVID Grant Money
The Eastern Daily Press has revealed that Norwich Labour took £10,000 in public money designed for businesses to stay afloat during the height of the COVID pandemic. As far as we are aware it has not been repaid.
While hardworking people across the country were worried for their livelihoods, it seems Norwich Labour were taking taxpayer cash to fund their own political campaigning. Indications are none of this money was used to keep people on the payroll, instead going towards purely political operations, as they continued to sit on almost half £1million in assets.
Many people will be bitterly disappointed and upset by this selfish decision by Labour. We believe it was utterly wrong, and refused to take any public money ourselves on moral grounds. They should urgently and immediately pay back this money.
University Ward Resident Survey
Norwich deserves so much more from its local council than what we’re getting at the moment.
Everywhere I go there are people in our community perplexed that even the simplest tasks, that a few years ago we would have taken for granted, now appear to be outside the grasp of the city council. It feels like our streets are getting dirtier, our public services less reliable, and green spaces, grass verges, and trees are neglected. All the while council tax bills have continued to skyrocket ever further each year.
You can’t even get in contact with them any more. There are multitudes of stories of local residents whose letters to the council go unreplied, emails to their local councillors unacknowledged, and phone calls to city hall require an hour of sitting in a waiting queue. You deserve a better response.
At the last city council election the Liberal Democrats came second in University Ward. We are the main challengers to a Labour Party that has won here every year for 18 years and done nothing. I want to be a local councillor who keeps in touch and fights for your priorities, that’s why I attach a survey so you can tell me what matters to you locally.
Whatever your views on national politics, and however you intend to vote at the general election, for the local elections on May 2nd I am standing to be your genuine local champion on the Norwich City Council. Please let me know your thoughts on local issues so I can best represent you and your priorities.