Cllr Ben Fitter-Harding is the Leader of Canterbury Council
I love being the Leader of Canterbury City Council, where we have a ‘comfortable’ (so I’m told… I disagree) majority of five.
Having taken over during Covid and implementing a raft of reforms, including a switch from the Committee system to Leader and Cabinet, things are moving; but with less than a year to go before our full-chamber (39) elections, it’s hard to escape the fact that things have been moving away from us in this part of the country in recent years, and I very much doubt the fall of Boris Johnson and ensuing leadership contest is helping that much.
Canterbury is an excellent Council that, for decades, has punched well above its weight as a district – and delivered incredible assets to residents, such as the Marlowe Theatre and Beaney House of Art and Knowledge. On the flip side, a poorly performing waste and grounds maintenance contractor, along with a shared housing service marred in scandal, has tarnished its reputation. Despite initially being a digital trailblazer, its progress in delivering that end-to-end digital revolution had faltered.
In the current local government financial ‘predicament’, we’re far from the only Council that ended up being spread too thinly. Years of investment in non-core areas such as museums, tourism, and publicly-run value-adds like cafés and co-working hubs created a wealth of cultural and economic benefits that councils then had to stretch themselves to maintain as budgets shrunk – often by millions of pounds a year with a working budget of only ~£20m to begin with.
Top-slicing and efficiency savings will only take an organisation so far before those receiving services start to feel the pinch. I saw the writing on the wall with that approach, if only later than is ideal to intervene. With depleted reserves following successive lockdowns this cost Canterbury its status as a usually well-resourced Council with the majority of its income coming not from Council Tax but from parking and property rents.
But intervene we have. Our approach, coined Basics Brilliantly, is all about taking pride in those universal services that matter to every resident. I want our fantastic officer team to be just as proud of collecting the bins on time and having a squeaky clean place to live as they are of our wonderful theatre. To me that means environmental services, housing, enforcement, and the economy. The latter sounds vague, but our Corporate Plan makes clear that it’s all about using our own assets for economic benefit; whether regeneratively or simply through making them economically productive by bringing them back into use.
Last year we won our first ever Local Government Award, which was a watershed moment for us all. Since I took over as Leader at the end of 2020, we’ve implemented a nationally-leading, end-to-end, digital waste service to complement our new Local Authority Trading Company (LATCo) waste provider, Canenco. We’re right in the middle of rolling out Salesforce as our organisation-wide CRM, and our digital investment is being matched by a full, though gruelling and unforgiving, restructure of the entire organisation.
Yet how does one communicate this sea change of approach to the electorate? How do we, as Conservatives, manage our own brand alongside the district Council brand?
For one, we’ve started a social media campaign to talk about the decisions that we’re taking. Decision Done is a campaign solely focussed on publicising each decision that Cabinet takes, and what it means, in simple terms, to our residents and businesses. The graphics are simple, with short and easy-to-understand copy.
Then there’s the campaign. We’re working with Andrew Kennedy Campaigning with the goal of having 20,000 conversations with residents between now and the election, to understand in detail their needs and support them in ways we’ve not been able to before. Together we’ll be reminding our supporters why it’s so important to keep Canterbury blue, and showcasing our local candidates’ talent on the doorstep.
I’m thrilled with the progress we’re making as a Council and our laser-focus on providing the best public services possible. I’m so very proud of the team that I get to work with as the Leader and the input I’ve been able to have on the organisation’s transformation. And most of all I continue to be humbled by the experience of serving the residents of the Canterbury district. Firmly in the belief that we’re the right people for the job and that our Conservative values are the ones that will bring increased wealth and prosperity for all to share in, we’re giving it everything we’ve got to hopefully see that reflected in the ballot box in May 2023.