Candidates pledge to fix the future of local services

Candidates from the five main political parties have pledged to fix vital services including social care, potholed roads and housing.

On Thursday, all 120 county councillors in East Sussex and West Sussex are up for election, as well as half of borough and district councillors in Hastings and Adur and a third of councillors in Crawley and Worthing.

It is the first time in five years that the 1.7m residents will elect county councillors after local elections in the area were postponed last year.

Candidates from the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Green Party and Reform UK joined Danny Pike on BBC Radio Sussex for a debate.

The Conservatives have run West Sussex for 29 years and East Sussex for 25 years.

Paul Marshall said that the party had experience of running the councils that "get on"

He said that the election was a question of, "who do you trust to deliver?", asking: "Is it about a proven delivery or is it about taking a risk?"

Marshall said that potholes, social care and SEND provision were "national issues" but that Conservatives had stepped in with £150m additional funding into roads across West Sussex.

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He added that he was "particularly proud" of the investment in adult and children that had helped to meet "really challenging needs".

He said that where critics identified "debt", he instead defined their spending as "investment", stating that borrowing was necessary to build schools and new road infrastructure.

The Liberal Democrats are the opposition party on both county councils.

Kathryn Field said that the government "failed to recognise" that funding social care properly would "head towards cutting NHS spending" because councils were "the front line to getting hospital admissions down, doing the work before people have acute need".

She said that council tax to raise money for social care needed to rise and that the Liberal Democrats were ready to make tough decisions so "anyone who is Care Act eligible will not go without".

While the councils were meeting their legal duties, they needed to do more, including making sure that care staff were paid more than "working behind a bar or stacking shelves" because it was vocational work, she said.

Field said that if Liberal Democrats won power, a top priority would be to review the councils' assets to see what could be sold to raise funds for services.

She added that East Sussex's pothole repair contract was agreed until 2030, adding that bringing the service "back in house to be managed effectively and efficiently" should be considered and that an urgent meeting with the contractor to seek to improve value for money.

The Labour Party is defending its leadership of Crawley, Worthing and Adur borough and district councils.

Jeremy Gardner said that the Labour government "can be trusted to give more money to local services" and a review of social care was under way where previous governments had "kicked it down the road for a long time".

Highlighting an ageing population, he said that Labour councils were focused on prioritising "a better life" for older people when it came to housing, transport and social care.

He said that Labour councils were working to rejuvenate and clean up town centres and using Pride of Place funding to invest in the most deprived areas.

On housing, he said that the housing crisis was largely hidden from public view, but that building new council homes and working with housing associations to ensure new developments included "a major portion" going to people on the housing register on social rents.

The Green Party is defending its leadership of Hastings Borough Council and hoping to make gains in both counties.

Johnny Denis said that more than a decade of "systematic defunding of local government" meant council tax was having to be spent on statutory services rather than the discretionary services.

He said that councils were "down to providing the basics, the minimum requirements by law", which meant residents did not see a return for their payments.

The council had to "reconsider what local services look like", which may mean "bringing services in house and we can have better oversight of some of the outcomes", he added.

He said that listening to local people was vital and social enterprises could be another "more imaginative" solution to running services.

Denis also said that addressing the crisis in affordable housing was key to making sure caring staff were available in the communities that need them.

Reform UK is looking to make its first inroads in the local elections in the area.

Other than winning an East Sussex seat in a Hastings by-election in November, its councillors have come from defections.

Gary Markwell said that the party would ensure anyone who needed social care would get it, especially in areas with ageing populations.

The party wants to tackle care providers being based "as far away as Birmingham", with a shortage of care staff meaning some are "staying in bed and breakfasts locally to provide care", he added.

He said that he wanted to see more modern technology, such as artificial intelligence sensors, used to bring down the cost of care and reduce hospital admissions.

Markwell said that this year's local elections were only happening because Reform UK challenged the government in court and they would use a similar approach to running councils.

He said that Sussex had spent years "paying more, getting less" but that the party was offering "hope" of fixing roads properly, public safety and prevention, supporting young people and reducing waste to allocate money to frontline services.

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