Gloucestershire Economic Growth/City Region Board

Stroud Times Article

17th August 2024

(Facebook wouldn't let me post this on my Councillor page as it goes against their community standards!!! It also got me banned from the platform for a couple of days.)

GFirstLEP pretty successful? The inability of GFirst LEP to deliver their Industrial Strategy left the County economically rudderless for five years. It's more than disappointing that the aged draft version of that flawed strategy was thought to be a good foundation for this reincarnation.

The 'City Board' has resurrected this unambitious strategy and touting it as 'vision'. The new Gloucestershire Economic Strategy. To me it's myopic. It lacks detail on achieving nett zero. It fails to address economic inequalities within our communities. It fails to identify the economic potential of all our rural settlements. It focuses on the whims of an urban metroplex to the detriment of the rural hinterland, their lack of public transport infrastructure, pot-holed roads and over capacity motorway junctions. In short, it rides roughshod over the needs of residents and the ambitions of our democratically elected district councils in nurturing their own strategies.

It has become clear that consultation with all of the rural district councils in the shire has been questionable. This is a strategy that is being foisted upon our communities rather than being developed in partnership with them. This is why Labour, Lib Dems, Greens and Conservatives could only bring themselves to 'note' it rather than 'support' or 'endorse' it. A position taken out of fear that they would be completely locked out of any future consultation.

For the record I could not bring myself to even 'note' this fundamentally flawed strategy and voted against it along with a small cohort of other Green Councillors who abstained.

https://stroudtimes.com/mean-on-sunday-i-applaud-our-county-council-for-not-dilly-dallying/