VOTE David Merlane

I have lived in the Rushden South and Rushden Bates wards for 15 years and as a local resident I can see the issues in Rushden on a daily basis, from the rise in food banks, to homelessness, to our crumbling public services.

For many years, the town, local and county councils have been dominated by Conservative-led authorities and with little opposition from Labour. Over the last decade or more this has seen a huge deterioration in local services and infrastructure. 

Our community has lost out on a new sports complex, early years family support, a youth centre, local travel services, street cleaning and a full service police station, amongst other things, never mind the shortage of GP healthcare and NHS dental support. 

Previously local healthcare facilities have been sold off and the sites are now houses and apartments. Then of course the high street retail area is being allowed to deteriorate (and don’t even mention the state of the roads and pavements)! Knutsford Hall & the adult learning facilities located there are going and the two unitary councils are arguing over who funds a local care home, with the strong possibility that it will be closed down. Disgraceful.

There are a number of significant residential developments already in the pipeline for South Rushden and we need to ensure that these are balanced in the planning consents by suitable numbers of well-paid, secure jobs, social housing and public infrastructure that will support both the existing and new residents and families.

The Conservative-led county council effectively bankrupted this county … twice, and this finally resulted in a move to a two unitary authority reorganisation, that has been calculated to cost us, the council taxpayers, in excess of £50 million! 

The Labour Party and other mainstream political parties have been unable to stop any of this at any level and in Rushden especially have very little presence these days. It’s time for a change to end the current fiasco and the Breakthrough Party is a new political party that is determined to do something about this, both locally and nationally. 

If elected I will challenge the councils to make decisions that actually benefit the local area and its residents and work with you to deliver this, setting up real lines of communications for you to use, eg. monthly face-to-face surgeries, two way social media and local news, to make our local services work for people, not profit. As well as this, I pledge that 100% of the allowances that I am paid by the council will be donated to local good causes and charities. 

Together, we can make Rushden a great place to be for future generations to come.