‘More and more residents believe that Boris Johnson’s Conservatives care more about big business than local people’

• YOU would have thought that, after wasting £6million on the Marble Arch Mound fiasco, Westminster Conservatives would have tried to bring some benefits to other parts of the borough.

But, true to form, Boris Johnson’s Westminster Conservatives cannot kick their obsession with spending money on Oxford Street.

Nearly £20million has already been spent on expensive consultants to draw up plans and designs for Oxford Street that will never be built.

And £10million was earmarked for the controversial Oxford Circus piazzas that will bring traffic chaos to the residential roads north and south of Oxford Street.

But now we have learned that the city council made a bid for a further £20million “levelling up” funding from the government for the Marble Arch end of Oxford Street. Not surprisingly the government rejected the council’s bid.

The clue as to why the council’s bid failed is in the name,”Levelling Up Fund”. This fund was devised to help deprived areas of United Kingdom towns and cities.

You would have thought that, with eight out of Westminster’s 20 wards having neighbourhoods among the most deprived in Britain, the city council’s bid for extra money would have aimed at improving life for residents in parts of Pimlico, Church Street and north Paddington.

But no. The Westminster Conservatives’ bid focused on improving “tourists’ experience” of the Marble Arch end of Oxford Street. Westminster Conservatives have long stopped bothering about the concerns of local residents.

More and more residents believe that Boris Johnson’s Conservatives care more about big business than local people. Indeed the Conservatives’ incompetence and failure to secure any of the £20 million “Levelling Up Fund” means that the most deprived areas of Westminster have lost out massively yet again.

In May Westminster residents will have the opportunity to tell Boris Johnson’s Conservatives that “enough is enough” and vote for a Labour council that will end the financial waste and will put residents at the front and centre of our priorities.

CLLR PAUL DIMOLDENBERG
Labour City Management Spokesperson
City Hall
Victoria Street, SW1