It’s been a very sad few months for local democracy in Southwark. We have seen the end of community councils and local planning decisions as we know them. Although Labour don’t think this matters because they can make quicker and cheaper decisions, I think there is nothing more important than local people being involved in the decisions that affect their lives.  The Labour Leader is saying that democracy is too expensive! But actually it saves money in the long run by making better decisions that people actually want.

We have proposed that the council looks at the idea of parish councils in order to try to protect local decisions and budgets. Labour’s first instinct is to scare monger that this will be too expensive. However, it doesn’t have to cost more as it would depend what services the parish councils was taking on. If the parish council needed to charge extra for a particular service then the borough could reduce that. We already have different council tax rates in different parts of the borough. All the Lib Dems are asking is that the council consults on whether people would like to have local parish councils. If you would like to support this debate then please sign our petition at http://southwark-libdems.org.uk/en/petition/parish-council-status-for-bermondsey