New Labour administration in Luton outlines its three key priorities after local election success

Airport expansion, a ‘war on waste’ and house building are three of the key priorities for the new Labour administration in Luton, after the party’s local elections success.

An interview process is under way to appoint the ruling group’s executive, according to Labour borough council leader and Lewsey councillor Hazel Simmons.

The party won 30 seats on the local authority, with the Liberal Democrats gaining 15 and the Conservatives three.

“It’s obviously fantastic to be re-elected again,” said councillor Simmons. “We’re pleased and proud that the Luton community had faith in the Labour Party to continue the work we’ve been doing.

“Housing is an obvious challenge in the town and the budget, although we have managed the finances well during the recent very difficult years.

“It’s been a challenging time and with the cost of living crisis, the economic position and this inept Conservative government, so it doesn’t appear some budgetary issues will improve that quickly.

“We’ll continue with the expansion of London Luton Airport obviously. The development consent order (DCO) is with government at the moment.

“And we’ll look to build 425 much-needed homes per year during the term of this administration, as well as take forward The Stage project and other town centre developments,” she explained.

“We’ve declared a ‘war on waste’ targeting those in our community who think it’s acceptable to dump their rubbish all over the place. This unacceptable behaviour is disrespectful to their neighbours and costs the council thousands of pounds dealing with the mess.

“Luton Labour have had enough of this and we know our residents have, so this will be a major issue for us during this term of office.”

Councillor Simmons confirmed the new executive is due to be unveiled at the borough council’s annual general meeting on Tuesday May 23rd.

On recent achievements, she added: “We opened the DART, a trailblazing infrastructure project that will transport passengers from Luton Airport Parkway Station to the airport in four minutes.

“We worked with our community through the Covid-19 pandemic helping it to manage the disproportionate effect on us all, with many losing loved ones and others a loss of employment.

“We dealt with the effect of this around aviation in stabilising our airport, and in having a well-managed and balanced budget, despite the resulting forced £22m cuts.

“We produced a clear strategy for the future with our Luton 2040 ‘nobody living in poverty’ vision, and also developed our green managed growth plans.

“The emphasis is on green technology jobs at our airport, along with our proposals for the most far-reaching sustainability measures ever put in place at a UK airport.

“We continued with our council tax reduction scheme, built more than 2,765 homes in our town and developed our £34m flagship programme of external wall insulation for 1,000 plus flats.

“And we invested £1m into tackling street service issues, carrying out 4,393 carriageway repairs costing more than £22m, as well as maintaining green flag status for six of our parks.”