Local elections: Who will get your vote

Date published: 05 May 2021

The local council elections take place in Oldham this Thursday.  There are 96 candidates looking for your votes across the borough.

Each councillor will be elected for a term of 4 years to represent the residents in one of 20 wards across the Oldham.

We've asked the main parties and groups for their pitch for your valuable vote and support on Thursday.

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We Plan to fix six issues in our Borough:

Fight crime and burlaries
Delivering 347 new police officers in Greater Manchester. With more visible policing, better detection, and prevention, and making sure our streets are safer.
 
Reparing roads and potholes
Invest an extra £5 million to fix potholes and more gully cleaning to stop roads flooding and cars being damaged.
 
Save our greenbelt
We will fight Labour run Oldham Council and their plans to build on our Green Belt. We must build new houses on brownfield sites first. We also want neighbourhood plans which are then put to a referendum. Something Labour and the Lib Dems voted against!
 
Cleaner streets
We want a cleaner and greener environment and to do that we want to invest £1.2 million extra into street cleaning to fight fly-tipping and fixing the dog fouling problem that is plaguing our borough.
 
Cut councillors to save £1million - create jobs
We want to Cut the number of Councillors from 60 to 40 to save nearly £1 million over 4 years, we want to put that money into helping people back into work.
 
Schools, NHS and GP Surgeries
The Conservative Government will increase school funding by £14 billion, fund 50 million extra GP appointments and £33.9 billion into the NHS. Locally we will look to rebuild and refit tired surgeries.

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This last year has been tough for everybody.

But our communities, supported by Oldham’s Labour Council, have pulled together to help each other and made us proud. We’ve done this under incredibly tough circumstances.

£200million of Tory cuts to Oldham Council Covid tested our public services to their limit, but we came through. We distributed emergency food to those in need, paid business grants quickly and got laptops to children so they could learn from home.

Now Oldham Council is supporting the vaccination rollout.

Having come through this we need to plan for after Covid.

Labour in Oldham has a plan to improve schools, create jobs, build homes and rebuild the economy in an environmentally friendly way. No other party is offering us a way forward.

At the Council’s budget meeting the Tories and Independent voted against setting a budget but offered no alternative suggestions. The Liberal Democrats put forward proposals to spend more in areas where they have Councillors, at the expense of everywhere else.

Labour in Oldham has delivered help to those in need during the pandemic and we have a plan to help our Borough prosper again as quickly as possible.

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The Liberal Democrats represent the only effective opposition to Labour on Oldham Council. 

Unlike the Conservatives, we speak out on the issues that our electors care about in Full Council and we fight for what our communities want.

·        We are opposed to Labour’s plan to build homes on the Green Belt. 

·        We are opposed to a giant incinerator in Royton. 

·        And we are opposed to Labour spending £68 million of Council Taxpayers hard-earned money on ‘Spendles’.

We want to see a Healthier, Greener and Cleaner Oldham Borough.

This year in our latest annual budget proposals, we found the money to invest

·        in three new health centres for Shaw and Crompton, Saddleworth, and Chadderton;

·        in energy efficiency measures;

·        to improve footpaths; and to tackle speeding, anti-social behaviour, fly-tipping and dog-fouling.

As usual the Conservatives offered no alternative to Labour and failed to support our proposals.

The Liberal Democrats have a straightforward philosophy – to be a voice for the voters we represent and the communities we serve in Crompton, Shaw, Royton, Saddleworth and Lees.

To deliver the best value-for-money services that we can for Council Taxpayers, and to cut Civic Centre bureaucracy and waste to make money available for frontline services and lower Council Tax bills.

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As the fastest growing party in the UK, people are turning to the Green Party because we offer a positive alternative to the failures of the past.

Our priorities for people in Oldham:

Local Green Spaces

Working with local communities, we will protect our precious green spaces from development. They give us health and wellbeing, tackle climate change and protect our endangered wildlife. There are enough brownfield sites for the housing and economic development that we need for Oldham to flourish.

Cleaner air, safer streets

We need air fit to breathe. Our ambitious plans to cut air pollution include reliable, affordable public transport. Safer streets for walkers and cyclists means more action on dog-fouling, more investment in street cleaning and community policing.

Decent social care

Action for funding and services to keep us safe during the Covid-19 pandemic must include full reform of the chaotic social care system to give our elderly and disabled people the dignity they have a right to expect.

Affordable, warm homes

Green Councillors will make genuinely affordable homes for renting or buying, an absolute priority. Making homes energy efficient will keep us warm, tackle fuel poverty and climate change.

Voting for the same old parties will give you the same old results. Make a difference. Vote Green on 6 May.

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Proud of Oldham and Saddleworth (POAS), was formally registered as a LOCAL independent party on November 12th 2019.

We are a Centralist Party whose appeal is to attract ex-moderate Labour, ex-moderate Conservative and those who are disenchanted with the Liberal Democrats - particularly locally.

Whilst the majority of our core members are former Labour Party members, we have many from all different political spectrums, but generically people who are simply fed up with main party politics.

It is our intention to appeal to people who have not voted in the past, or have abstained, or are simply seeking an alternative. Candidates whom are dedicated to LOCAL issues.

Our mantra is a simple one:

To represent all the people in the ward and make it a better place for everyone who lives in the area

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See a full list of all the candidates for each ward here