13/11/2025
As a woman in a public facing role, I don't often talk about the impact that the bad stuff can have. Daily abuse, threats of harm etc. But today a so called 'campaigning group' came my place of work during our Cabinet meeting and started screaming and shouting at me from the public gallery meaning we had to clear the Chamber and pause the meeting.
Ironically this group claims to campaign for affordable housing, yet they interrupted us as we were deciding to allocate millions of pounds to build 306 new affordable homes on the Sackville estate including 183 council homes of 1, 2, 3 and 4 bed properties. These are not the actions of people who genuinely care about people experiencing homelessness or the vulnerable. But neither is the apparent campaigning this group also recently did for the Reform candidate in the Queens Park by-election. Populists on the left and right often meet in the middle.
Even more ironically, their stunt was supposedly about debt collection methods and yet they seem to have missed the fact that in March 2025 we introduced a new policy on debt management to ensure that we can support, rather than punish, those facing hardship in council arrears. The statistics they quoted are for the previous financial year – before we changed council policy - and are exactly why our Labour Council has adopted a more progressive approach, putting Labour values into action. This group gets most things wrong and they also love to take credit for things they have had nothing to do with.
Many at the moment would have you believe that Labour values in action cannot transform lives and lift people out of poverty. That is false. Today our Cabinet funded homes for hundreds of families with spaces to grow food, play, build community and with large windows to let the light in. We have approved a new active travel scheme from Fourth Ave to the Western boundary of the City with more access for pedestrians and more green spaces. We've also proposed a new school admissions consultation to expand the sibling link for secondary school places and to build on our work to boost fairness in school admissions.
Remember not to always listen to those that shout the loudest, nor those that feel entitled to intimidate women to make their point.
