New canons

The Bishop of Dover has announced three new canons of Canterbury Cathedral. The Reverend Peter Ingrams has been appointed nonresidentiary canon, and Neville Emslie and Quentin Roper will be honorary lay canons. Peter is currently local ministries and growth adviser for Canterbury Diocese while Neville is director of mission and ministry and Quentin is director of education. Their installations will take place in the Cathedral on Saturday.

therefore, is tacitly conscious of splitting the left-of-centre vote.

It’s widely maintained that one of the reasons for Ms Duffield’s stunning victory was a rise in the number of student voters. Speaking after the results were announced, her predecessor even labelled this as the “largest factor” behind his defeat. And Alan believes that it could again play a crucial role in May.

“We will try incredibly hard to get as many students out as we can,” he says. “An issue that we face is that we need to encour- age younger people to get out and vote. It affects us more than other parties. We do take the view, though, that whenever we knock on the door we will remind everyone to vote.”

Predictably, Labour will campaign on the promise to build more council homes. It, along with the Lib Dems, has attacked the Conservatives’ underwhelming attempts to tackle the waiting list – which had 2,500 households on it at the end of last year.

They point to the local authority’s failed bid for almost 150 houses at Howe Barracks in 2016, its £23m acquisition of 44 student properties in Parham Road and the alarming revelation that no new council homes have been built over the last seven years.

If the party does win a majority in May, Alan says its first act would be to commission a report into available sites across the district.

“This council is only interested in sticking a plaster over the problem,” he adds.

“Two years ago, I asked the council to put some money aside to develop a long-term plan to build social housing because you need to find sites and seek planning permissions. It laughed at me.

“Cllr Jenny Samper told me ‘we’re already doing more than enough’ and Simon Cook agreed with her wholeheartedly.”

Alan is hoping the report will lay the foundations for a decade-long housing plan. While he refuses to commit to a specific number, he does say Labour will build “more than 1,000” homes by 2029. He believes this could be achieved by “maxing out” borrowing on the council’s housing revenue account – although he concedes it could be a “tough one because we’d have to make sure we could pay it back” – and by splitting the cost with the likes of housing associations and co-operatives.

“There are many things we can do to improve the way housing is delivered,” he continues. “The council paying £300,000-odd for each home in Parham Road is too much. It’s not cost-effective when you can build a house for £150,000 on land that we own.

“We’re not going to come into the council promising to do the most ridiculous things. We’ll be a different council with different views; but we do know how to run the books. We’re not going to bankrupt this council, that’s a promise. We’ll run the council just as well as the Tories.”

Among the party’s other promises are pledges to crack down on pollution across the district, to campaign for an acute hospital in the city, and to improve cycle paths and bus services in order to reduce congestion.

Labour has not committed to a position on the hotly-debated multi-storey car park in Station Road West, though. It and the Lib Dems have regularly heaped scorn on the project, regarding it as a reckless use of funds and environmentally damaging. However, the local authority is set to sign a multi-million pound contract with construction firm Willmott Dixon to begin work on the scheme.

“We’ll have to see whether the council is stupid enough to sign the contract in order to see what we will be able to do if we win a majority,” he says. “It is so unlikely to make any money in real terms and we’d have to judge whether it’s worth the cancellation costs or if we’d have to swallow it and get on with construction.”

We need to encourage younger people to get out and vote

We’re not going to bankrupt this council, that’s a promise