Interview with Luke Hayes, Labour candidate in Shrub End, Colchester

 Interview with Luke Hayes, Labour candidate in Shrub End, Colchester

• Why a Labour candidate in Shrub End?

I’ve always been a Labour voter, I’ve always associated myself to liberal ideals on a national scale and looking at the local Labour Party I felt like I fit in it really well with the demographic, with the people that were already sitting in the party. I felt like Labour really fitted me, whereas the LibDems, I appreciate a lot of their values, and we’re all in this trying to make everyone’s lives better, but I felt like I fitted better with Labour; and of course, on top of that, I’ve been a Labour Party member since 2016.

• What are the main issues you want to prioritise in this campaign?

I’m running on 5 priorities: I want to work closely with the local police to tackle antisocial behaviour in the area, I want to work on the environmental credentials that Shrub End already has (We have a fantastic green space but I want to build upon that), I want to celebrate our heritage (Shrub End is named after a shrubbery that used to be in the area, and to some extent still is, I want to build upon that), I also want to work closely with charities in the area to look at ways to work on the Gosbecks area, because Gosbecks is astounding and unique to Colchester, there’s a Roman amphitheatre and currently all we have to show for it are a few talk lines on the ground, a notice board and the car park. I think that’s absolutely criminal. 

The other thing is obviously the roads and pathways, I intend to fully hold Essex County Council to account for it, because they’ve spent 1 million pounds last year on that, and more could’ve been done, specially for Shrub End. 

I’ve been talking a lot with residents in the area, the big thing that has come out recently is the fact that there’s very little underway for children to do, children from very young ages up to teenagers, we’ve got a skatepark which is fantastic but is very limited, we’ve got different playgrounds for younger children, but there’s no youth provision. I want to try to work on that as well to bring some of that back to Shrub End. There was a study in 2005-6 that said Shrub End was one of the most deprived areas in Colchester, and one of the big things to that was the lack of youth provision, that was exacerbated by the fact there’s just nothing for children to do. Those are really the things I’m running on. These are the things I’m trying to tackle, and I’ve got fantastic support from the Labour county councillor of the area. He supported me phenomenally over the past year to get these things moving.

• Why is Labour the best alternative to the Conservatives?

With the Conservatives you have privatisation, they’re very right-leaning. I don’t want to sound ungrateful of the work that the current councillors are doing, I think it’s brilliant that Shrub End is where it is. I think that a Labour councillor can bring more, we can put the investment into youth provision, we can look at extending the skatepark. There’s things that I believe we can do with a Labour councillor that aren’t being done at the moment. The thing is that I’m coming into this with an interest in local politics that I have for a very long time, and from what I can see, the things that I’ve been looking at and working on haven’t been done yet. I’m fully prepared to work to get these things done. On a local level it’s difficult to differentiate very much between the two main competing parties. I’m more interested about the community and the people in it. Shrub End has a fantastic community, so I want to emphasise that.