Conservatives: “We need a Council that focuses on delivering for residents, not on Hexit fairy tales”

Matej Travnicek, Chairman of Dagenham and Rainham Conservatives, writes in today’s Havering Daily to set out the party’s opposition to Reform UK’s plans to leave London.

Like it or not, we are dependent on London. The District and Elizabeth lines are our lifelines, taking us to our jobs, to see friends and family, and to enjoy everything from Kew Gardens and the British Museum to the great sights of Westminster and the theatres of the West End.

And there are financial benefits too. People working in Havering receive thousands of pounds extra thanks to London weighting, and every TfL commute is cheaper because all of Havering is in Zone 6.

Just ask anyone from Brentwood how they like being in Zone 9 and therefore having their daily anytime cap set at £23.30. That is £7 more than for us in Zone 6, £147 more over a typical 21-day working month, or £1,764 a year. Not to mention weekends. The impact on elderly residents would be even more severe because of the potential loss of the Freedom Pass.

Should we still rather be in Essex? We already are! It is our heritage. Essex is our historic county, and we can enjoy the nearby seaside resorts of Southend and Leigh-on-Sea whenever we want. We can visit Roman Colchester or admire Chelmsford Cathedral. No one can take that away from us. Nor can anyone put Havering on little wheels and move it somewhere else. We are where we are, in a true town and country borough that can prosper and enjoy the benefits of both London and Essex.

But here we are, having an absurd debate about Reform UK’s absurd proposal to pursue Hexit. We are doing this at a time when we should be focusing on the real problems plaguing our streets. For example, just last week I spoke to residents whose family members, both young boys, had been mugged by criminal gangs. One was threatened with a machete in broad daylight on a high street. The other had been mugged multiple times over the past twelve months.

We should focus on fixing this. And Hexit is not going to help, as Essex Police is smaller than the Met. To put it in numbers, Essex has one police officer for every 592 people, meaning 34 more people share each police officer compared with London. Those officers also police an area more than twice the size of Greater London.

We already rarely see a police patrol in Elm Park, where I live, and under this plan it would get even worse. Is that good enough? No. We need to push the Mayor for more police presence on our streets. And since, as one of my neighbours put it on the doorstep, “He took the police away to police Gaza marches in central London and never bothered to return them,” we cannot rely on an unreliable Mayor. We must take action ourselves with more CCTV cameras and by backing those who stand against crime.

And there is more, our parks, fly-tipping, potholes in our roads, and fixing our broken council finances. These are real problems that affect our lives on a daily basis. We need to focus on them, yet Reform UK would rather waste precious money, time, energy and other Council resources pursuing its wet dream of Hexit.

We need a Council that focuses on delivering for residents, not on Hexit fairy tales.

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