Promising continued investments in education, children’s services, affordable housing, leisure centres and cultural venues, Waltham Forest Council leader Grace Williams says Labour is the right choice for voters on Thursday, 7th May

By Marco Marcelline

As voters prepare to go to the polls, Waltham Forest Council leader Grace Williams is asking that Labour be given another run at the town hall based on the party’s “track record” and its “grown‑up plan” for the borough.

Speaking to the Echo, Cllr Williams, who has been council leader since 2021, said the borough has changed significantly since Labour first gained majority control in 2010 (the party had minority control and ran the council with the Liberal Democrats between 2002 and 2010).

“If you look back to how the borough was before 2010, it was a different place. Residents will often say to me on the doorstep that nothing happened, there wasn’t new housing being built, everything was a bit forgotten. But more seriously, we had really poor services.”

Which Labour achievements is she most proud of? Listing investments in education, children’s services, leisure centres and cultural venues, one of the examples she returns to is the William Morris Gallery. “People forget that in 2012 the gallery was going to close and Lloyd Park was in a terrible state.

“The Labour council got a really large Heritage Lottery Fund grant [£1.6m] and transformed the park and the gallery. It’s a really good example of what we’ve done in the borough.”

Soho Theatre Walthamstow, the forthcoming Regal cinema in Highams Park, and the redevelopment of Fellowship Square are, she argues, further examples of Labour successes.

“We have a manifesto, we have a plan, and it’s a grown‑up plan,” she declares. “It’s within the budget we’ve got, working with the situation we’ve got. It’s highly focused on the fact that we still have such systematic inequalities in our borough, which we’re determined to address.”

Cllr Williams also uses the council’s closer partnership with the voluntary sector since the pandemic as an example of things Labour has got right. “We learned a lot from our community and voluntary sector,” she says.

“Through working together, we’ve been able to build amazing pieces of work. Our cost‑of‑living programme, community living rooms, and Waltham Forest Max – the offer that anyone can have going into any library to get help and support – all came from that partnership.”

But she acknowledges that not everything has gone smoothly. The original plan for the Walthamstow Mall redevelopment, which would have removed mature lime trees, was a move she regards as a mistake. “People weren’t very pleased about that,” she admits.

“So we worked to change the plans and make sure those lime trees, which are really loved, were protected.” Further unpopular decisions taken by her administration have included the closure of a day centre for adults with special needs, the scrapping of weekly bin collections, and the end of free 15‑minute parking in the borough.

Critics say the abolition of free 15‑minute parking has hit Chingford particularly hard relative to other high streets because it is an area with proportionately more car owners.

Cllr Williams doesn’t express any regret for the move, however, saying: “We need to reduce the car journeys that people are making to their town centres. Most people can walk, many people can cycle, most people can get a bus.

“We know that if people come to their town centre on foot, they spend more money because they spend more time there.”

There’s an elephant in the room; namely Waltham Forest’s recent £19m emergency bailout request to the government. It’s a decision that was seized on by the Tory opposition as evidence of financial mismanagement and the council using taxpayer money like a “credit card”.

Cllr Williams however retorts that she is “really confident that we’ve done everything we can every step of the way” to manage finances amid “chronic underfunding”. She adds the council has been “honest” about the pressures it faces.

“We’ve been saying for a number of years that we would need additional support. We’ve been working hard and lobbying for our residents for fairer funding. Some of that is starting to improve, but you can’t fix things like this overnight.”

She explains the borough loses out because it is classified as an “out‑of‑London” authority for funding purposes. “Teachers in the borough are paid less than teachers in neighbouring boroughs. Our public health funding is much lower than the other boroughs in the ICB [Integrated Care Board]. These are things we need a fair settlement on.”

There is mounting frustration among parents and regarding a review into the Whitefield School abuse scandal that have been beset by delays. Asked why it was taking so long for it to be published, Cllr Williams, who served as cabinet member for children and young people from 2016 until 2021, said: “Well, so first of all, let’s remember that it is an academy school [not a local authority school].

“Secondly, there is a robust safeguarding review process led by a safeguarding partnership, which isn’t just the local authority. It’s health, police, schools, and they decide on who does the review and the timing of that. So I have no more information than that, other than it is a process completely separate to politicians and will proceed as it should.

She adds: “It’s a really important issue, and quite rightly, parents and the local community, like us, want to know what happened.”

On the topic of health, she says Labour will continue pushing for the Whipps Cross Hospital rebuild to be brought forward. “I was very devastated by the news that it wasn’t going ahead until 2032. We had one of the clearest cases in terms of need. Now we need to keep focused on how we keep de‑risking the project to make sure there’s nothing standing in its way.”

With the Green Party’s surge in the polls seriously threatening Labour hegemony, Cllr Williams is urging residents to “think about who you want to run your services”. She says: “Ask the question: what do they stand for? What have they said about protecting services? What have they said about actually building affordable homes?”

And she ruled out a coalition with the Greens. “We can’t do coalitions,” she says. “We stand for the voters that elect us. There
are many things we can work cross‑party on, but that’s not how we work.”

Asked if she felt confident about Labour’s chances of winning again in May, Cllr Williams notably opted for a more measured response: “People talk to me about moving here and loving the borough. They say they love the parks, they love the low‑traffic neighbourhoods, they love the culture. But nationally, people have had a tough 15 years. They want to make sure we have stable leadership, but they also want to make sure they feel better… we will provide that leadership.”

You can read the Labour Party’s manifesto for Waltham Forest here

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