Leader says council will deliver for Swindon after big election win

After winning the elections for Swindon Borough Council on Friday, Coun Renard also won a renewed mandate from his councillors. He had been challenged for the top job by his deputy leader and cabinet member for finance Russell Holland. 

And Coun Renard says he believes Swindon is in a good place to be ready to move forward. 

But first he made the point that while elections feel like a punctuation point, the work of the council never stops.

He said: “It can feel like the cycle has finished, then you have an election, then it all starts again – but actually all the old jobs of the council need to carry on, so it feels less like that to me.” 

After eight years in charge – at which point US presidents would be stepping down and riding into the sunset – Coun Renard said his administration is now moving into delivery having done a lot of preparatory work and is glad to have a significant majority in the council chamber. 

He said: “If you look back eight years ago we had a majority of one and it was very difficult to get decisions through council, and that was very tricky to manage. 

“Over the last eight years we’ve had to manage the budget and look to try to continue to try to provide services in different ways. 

“We’ve had the pandemic which has been a very difficult time for everybody, and we’ve had to continue providing services through all of that. 

“But I’m optimistic as we look forward – we see cranes in the centre of town for the first time in a long while with the Zurich building and the Kimmerfields regeneration, we have the town centre and the bus boulevard coming, and significant government investment in the town centre. 

“There are attractive new housing developments coming and there are a number of reports which all say that Swindon’s economy is well-placed to bounce back from the pandemic. 

"We had the unexpected news of Honda’s closure a couple of years ago, but the site has now been sold, and we are making the point that Swindon is very much open for business and I think the future is looking really bright, and I think that has been reflected in the vote of confidence we’ve just been given.” 

It's a cliché of politics that voters don’t reward past success for very long – and it’s the promise of the future which  wins voters over and keeps them onside. 

One of the features of the win for Coun Renard’s Conservatives was the victories in previously solid Labour seats in the Central, Rodbourne Cheney and Liden, Elden & Park South wards. 

Coun Renard acknowledges there is work to do to  keeping the support of voters in non-traditional Conservative areas. 

He said: “That is a big challenge for the years ahead. 

“We need to look at how we engage more closely with some of the least advantaged areas of Swindon and how we serve them better. We have to serve all the residents in all the wards of course, but there is work to do on that.” 

Having spent time campaigning in the wards where his party made such a gain, the leader of the group says the priorities  are bread and butter issues like roads and pavements.

He said: “It came up a lot, and it’s clear we are going to need to find more money to do more on the roads across the borough. 

“We are spending lots of money on major projects – Junction 15 of the M4, the White Hart roundabout, the Moonrakers’ junction, but people want to  have improvements made in their areas as well. If you live on a street with an uneven or broken pavement, you want that fixed.” 

Coun Renard said his administration will be refreshing its vision, priorities, and pledges document soon, setting out the programme for the next 10 years. 

He said: “We want to increase opportunities for education and training for everyone – not just young people, and the Institute of Technology will be opening soon, and that will offer lot of people the chance to improve their skills and their lives. 

“We have the country parks strategy, which is very important. I went to a couple of country parks recently, and they are very popular and well-used – and they’ve been important during the last year when people haven’t been able to go elsewhere, and to be able to get out. We want to make them places that people really want to go to. 

“We want to do the same for the town centre – we’re talking to the private landlords who own the majority of it, and the cultural quarter plan is not just about a theatre and art gallery, but about making the town centre an attractive place where people want to go.” 
Coun Renard said the economy is key.

He said: “We are set to recover well, and as long as people have confidence in Swindon the investment will come in. 

“I think over the next 10 years we will see a transformation of Swindon, and we have put good plans in place and have attracted significant investment, and it will start happening over the next decade.”

Big majority can mean big challenge

Big majorities are always preferable for a leader of any political body, but David Renard is aware that too large a party group brings its own challenges. 

He said: “A small majority as we had when I became leader means it's difficult to get things through council, and it means that one or two councillors can derail things if they don’t agree. 

“If the majority is too big then it can be difficult to maintain discipline. If there isn’t much of an opposition, then the opposition starts to come from within the group. 

“I think something in between is about right. I think 15 is a very good majority to have and we’ll still be having our discussions within the group, and making sure that when a policy is agreed we all get behind it in the council chamber. 

“We still consider Labour in Swindon Borough Council as an effective opposition, and we expect robust scrutiny by Labour councillors – and welcome it.”