Sheffield local elections: Fighting on locals’ behalf – what to expect from the Community Councillors Group?

In a series of interviews with party leaders ahead of the May 2 local elections in Sheffield, Cllr Dianne Hurst from the Sheffield Community Councillor Group has told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) why she (and some of her colleagues) left the Labour Party and what’s next in – now – opposition at town hall.

For a start, we met at Richmond Park in Sheffield, where Cllr Hurst wanted to talk about a mix of real local issues – the lack of housing options when homes are lying empty, and abandoned.

In this case, it’s a three-bed home just at the gate of the park. It’s been empty for more than three years.

She said it all started out as a house that needed a little bit of doing up.

It now needs substantial work and tens of thousands of pounds to make it habitable again during a housing crisis when the council is “spending a fortune on” temporary housing and bed and breakfast.

Cllr Hurst said: “It’s subject to arson and no longer safe. I wanted to come here because this is where we are, the Sheffield Community Councillors.

“We are about listening to people locally and responding.”

Cllr Hurst was one of the councillors who were suspended from the Sheffield Labour Party after voting against the Local Plan, a blueprint for development in the city. A little bit later, she and some of her colleagues – including the former leader of the council Terry Fox – left the party and created a group within the chamber at Sheffield Town Hall.

Looking back, she said she was “content” with her decision.

She said: “I genuinely believe that Labour is not listening… they are so focused on the general election. These are local elections. This is for the people of Sheffield to say what direction they would like their city to go to and how would they like it to be governed.

“It’s not about national issues – yes, national issues will come but this is about us here in Sheffield and the way that we spend our money wisely and the way that we support our communities.”

She said she voted against the Local Plan in the first place – despite thinking Sheffield needed one – because when it was published, “there was a site in there for industrial use and travelling show persons that hadn’t been in at all”.

Cllr Hurst said: “It was housing in the last plan and it was taken out because it was considered not to be suitable for housing. The streets around Crystal Peaks are full, there are junctions that are at capacity, we have less public transport, we have less buses.

“The party locally – the district Labour Party and the people that voted for me – said this is not an appropriate site, if this is in the plan when it comes to council, you must vote against it.”

She said she expected to have her whip suspended but when no one talked to her for a month, she and her colleagues thought “they want our votes, they want our money, they don’t actually want us”.

She said: “But we had a lot to give, so what do we do?”

They ended up resigning from the Labour Party and started a new formation.

Cllr Hurst said she thought since then, they have managed to get debated some of the issues they raised and they were able to influence some decisions as well.

“I think we’ve done the right thing,” she added.

She said they still had a voice in the chamber and a lot of people who were prepared to support them.

“We work in the community, we listen to the community, and I think that is appreciated,” she added.

Cllr Terry Fox resigned as leader of the council on the day of the count of last year’s local elections – raising eyebrows in and around the city.

Cllr Hurst said she didn’t know what would Cllr Fox say about why he resigned on that particular day but she said she believed what he would never have done was to resign on the morning of the elections without knowing what the outcome would be.

She was asked whether she thought people would still associate some people from the group with the Sheffield street tree scandal.

Cllr Hurst said you had to look at how they have changed over the last few years – she described them as “politicians, happy amateurs” who are not experts at everything.

She said: “We governed the council by, what was then, a cabinet system. So there were a certain number of people and then they did take decisions in isolation. They took them on advice from officers and from our contractors and it was always the case of you take the advice and then you carry the can.

“Even before Lowcock reported, Terry (Cllr Fox) was trying to put things into place – and I don’t want to disrespect anyone – to try and learn lessons and to move on.”

Sheffield Community Councillors are not a party. Cllr Tony Damms, who is part of the group, is standing as an independent next month.

Cllr Hurst said they only resigned a couple of months ago and it takes a long time to get a political party up to standards and registered.

She claimed they were independents working together as part of a group and there were a handful of people standing as independents “that have expressed an interest” in working with them.

When asked what we can expect from her and her colleagues in the new year, she said they were still going to ask important questions at council meetings to “fight on behalf of the community”.

She said: “And if just by being the opposition raising things, topics, instances, examples no one wants to talk about if we talk about those, then that’s good. It’s fine by me!”

The Local Democracy Reporting Service has already heard from Labour’s Tom Hunt, Cllr Shaffaq Mohammed from the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party’s Cllr Douglas Johnson.