Andrew Husband calls for child poverty to be prioritised

It is fair to say that the recent local elections were seismic and a fantastic result for Reform UK.

Durham will now have three neighbouring councils to support, with a simple mission of trying to make life better for our residents and to get better value for money for the councils that we run.

This provides an excellent opportunity to push the North East mayor to put child poverty back to the front of her agenda rather than vanity projects.

Local councils are continuing to see poverty cause major damage to the family unit and more and more children are sadly coming into care.

If this government won’t help us, the mayor must do her bit instead.

Last week in full cabinet County Durham announced a scheme to buy our own homes to help with supported living.

The welfare bill across all of our councils is not sustainable, not just in the north east but nationwide – we quite simply do not get enough central government funding to tackle this statutory problem which is well and truly being caused by this inept Labour government, making everybody poorer.

Did you know that the cost of keeping some children in care is £16,000 per week?

This is now a care emergency and I want local councils to get more support from the North East Combined Authority (NECA) and Joy Allen, our Labour Police & Crime Commissioner, to bring in ethical providers, to push back against profiteering.

We need to jointly develop preventative measures, e.g. more street workers to engage with our youth, more opportunities for youth provisions and youth hubs which provide safe spaces and a distraction for bored kids, with more technology being introduced to help tackle anti-social behaviour (e.g. drones and CCTC).

We are seeing pride in our communities reduce and crime is increasing.

We are also seeing the demand for social homes rocket and in Durham we are already committed to building up to 500 new council-owned homes by 2029.

We need our neighbouring councils to do the same.

It is because we don’t have enough houses that we will be working with local providers to put local people first.

We will soon be introducing a locality model so that local people are front of the queue for social homes.

You will need a connection to Durham, be it family or having worked here for a specific period of time to get a house – these are the types of tough decisions we need to make to help the rebuilding of our communities and community spirit.