Regeneration and infrastructure projects remain live political issues in councils across the country and the policies that authorities adopt may well change in the months to come as new leadership comes in and minds refocus on decision making after the lull of purdah.
But the 3rd of May 2018 will go down in history as the landslide that wasn’t. Or rather it probably won’t go down in history at all, as the status quo prevailed over radical change.
Ben Heatley, Director at Copper discusses the 2018 local elections
The 2018 local elections were badged as potentially momentous.
They represented a straight fight between Labour and the Conservatives who each have starkly different visions for local government. Labour were set to maintain their onward march in London and the Tories faced a potentially disastrous night, which could have shaken the government.
But the predicted political earthquake didn’t happen. In truth, seismologists would have been hard pushed to detect anything other than the most localised of tremors.
Yes, Labour picked up Plymouth and knocked the Conservatives off their perch in Trafford. Their story in London was also more positive than the headlines will imply, as the number of Labour Councillors has increased. But they failed to take control of any authorities in the capital.
Meanwhile, it hasn’t been a particularly positive night for the Conservatives, but it was a long way from a disaster. Aided by a complete collapse in the UKIP vote they have managed to pick up a handful of authorities across the Midlands, where their number of councillors has also increased.
The Lib Dems and the Greens have made progress, without achieving anything which can be considered a breakthrough, and UKIP are now facing potential extermination in local government.
So, what does this all mean for infrastructure and development? In truth, the answer is that very little has changed. Local elections are always hard to draw conclusions about, because voting at a council level is always a mix of national political issues and hyper local concerns relating to basic services and often proposed development.
At a ward by ward, authority by authority level last night’s elections may be extremely significant, changing the political landscape and the level of local political support for a given project or proposal in a specific region.
But taking a national perspective, the results are at best inconclusive. There hasn’t been an enormous upswing of support for Jeremy Corbyn’s vision of municipal socialism and resident democracy to govern which regeneration and development projects go ahead. Even in Kensington and Chelsea, where the Grenfell Disaster dominated the election, the Conservatives held on.
Regeneration and infrastructure projects remain live political issues in councils across the country and the policies that authorities adopt may well change in the months to come as new leadership comes in and minds refocus on decision making after the lull of purdah.
But the 3rd of May 2018 will go down in history as the landslide that wasn’t. Or rather it probably won’t go down in history at all, as the status quo prevailed over radical change.
