The Green Party has selected a full slate of nineteen candidates that will represent every area across Southend in the upcoming Local Elections in May.
Our candidates are a diverse and energetic group of passionate locals keen to bring Green ideas to the table. Our representatives reflect the truly diverse nature of the town, featuring frontline health workers, teachers, businesspeople, and parents in our team this year. As ordinary people ourselves, we know the challenges the town faces as we recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Green Party offers new and innovative solutions to many of the town’s problems, but we can only make the change the town needs with your support.
A full list of our candidates (and short bios) have been published in Our Candidates section.
What We Stand For:
These elections are crucially important for so many reasons.
As the first election held since 2019, residents across town have the opportunity to vote on a wide range of issues that matter to them. Southend is not exempt from suffering from the national crises in housing, education, and healthcare, and meeting the ever-changing needs of our community is a task made more difficult by having a Local Authority without sufficient vision or determination to make the necessary changes to take us forward.
Our committed and hardworking volunteers are already hard at work in our communities standing up for residents, winning impossible victories against developers, and fighting to make Southend a better town. Many local families who’ve never previously supported the Greens are pledging support for our vision of change this year.
Whilst the other political parties treat the Climate Emergency merely as a trendy fringe issue, offering woolly and unambitious environmental targets, you know that The Greens view this issue with the seriousness and gravity it deserves, and when elected, you can trust us to instigate the biggest shift in council direction in a century. Despite every warning light on the dashboard being on, the council continues to ignore climate science and is putting our families at direct risk. Worse still, they’re supporting the big polluters causing this.
We will lead a Green Recovery from the pandemic, with practical support for businesses and families struggling to make ends meet, and with the resolve to follow the expert science to take us forward as a town.
AIR POLLUTION
Air Pollution in many areas in Southend is already illegally high, exceeding the safe limited as set by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Traffic congestion along the A127 and A130, in addition to the pollution from the Airport, only compounds these issues. Rather than kicking the can along the road by conducting long-term studies as the Conservatives once did, and as the Labour/Liberal/Independent coalition administration is now doing, Greens would introduce radical measures to help alleviate the town’s congestion crisis, and would bring in new controls to ensure clean, breathable air for our town. Clean Air is a right, and our current administration is failing us.
OUR HIGH STREET
Small local businesses and our High Street are struggling. Whilst the Labour party believes the future of our High Street is residential, the Greens stand by our commitment to local business and believe that in order to save our High Street, we should be blockading any out-of-town retail parks that would seal the fate of our ailing high-street. Small cooperatives and businesses should be supported with concessions to business rates, and a full-time indoor fresh food market introduced to support local growers and help promote healthy eating.
HOUSING FOR ALL
Housing is at a crisis-level in our town. More families are struggling to make ends meet, and many families are in destitution paying ever-increasing rent amounts each month. The Conservatives and Labour are both lauding the Better Queensway scheme as one answer to our town’s issues, but in reality, there will be insufficient truly affordable homes on the site for local people. We believe a sustainable and affordable housing revolution in our town is required. We need to stop building luxury high-profit commuter homes on Green-belt land and should be building truly-affordable homes on the 50+ brownfield sites across our town, and supporting new housing co-operatives that will make it happen.
LITTER
Litter is at epidemic levels across the town; Marine pollution is at such the extent whereby voluntary groups in Southend (including some set up by the Green Party) are out almost every weekend collecting the discarded trash that sullies our wonderful beaches and coastline. Greens would continue to tackle rampant littering and fly-tipping and would seek to support voluntary groups in a community effort to tidy up our town. Other initiatives such as repair cafes, and upcycling groups would also be given funding to help repair and repurpose broken goods and electronics to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill.
You can read our full local manifesto in the What We Stand For section.
Visit the Get Involved section for details on how you can help get Greens elected in Southend.