Buckinghamshire local elections 2025: Council leader claims authority is 'well-run'

The Local Democracy Reporting Service is interviewing representatives of all the main political parties standing candidates in the elections.

Councillor Martin Tett has led Bucks Council since its inception in 2020 and represents the Little Chalfont and Amersham Common ward.

Having been campaigning since November, how does he feel about Bucks Conservatives’ chances at the polls in two weeks’ time?

“The reception has been really good,” he said, “I think people recognise that Buckinghamshire is a well-run council unlike many of those around us and elsewhere in the country.”

One issue on voters’ minds though is potholes, Councillor Tett said, adding that his authority has ‘20 teams out’ repairing road defects.

The council boss said ‘pressing ahead’ with the roads programme was among the issues he wanted to tackle over the next four years.

Another is public safety, building on the council’s recent rollout of dozens of new CCTV cameras, the first of which were installed in Wycombe.

He explained: “We have got them across different towns across the county where there are potential hotspots for crime or antisocial behaviour.

“What I am hoping is that we can work more closely with Thames Valley Police to target particular areas of antisocial behaviour.”

Councillor Tett also said he was pleased the council had managed a 78 per cent reduction in its net carbon emissions for 2023/24 compared to the baseline 1990 levels.

He added: “That’s through a whole range of different measures. It is things like tree planting, LED lights, switching off streetlights, putting solar panels on roofs.”

Asked if the climate targets could be more ambitious, the Tory leader said his council would not ‘virtue signal’ about global warming like other authorities with ‘no budget or strategy’.

The Tory leader said residents were ‘pretty happy with the way we run things’ and was confident about his party’s chances.

But Councillor Tett was asked about Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch’s speech in Beaconsfield last month in which she said England’s local elections would be ‘extremely difficult’ for the Tories following Labour’s landslide general election victory last summer.

He said: “I am not complacent. Let’s be really clear, we are going to fight for every single vote in every single ward across the county.”

The Tory leader said he was ‘still fighting very hard’ for a Conservative majority on the council, which will be reduced in size from 147 councillors to 97 at these elections.

On balancing the budget for another year running, Councillor Tett stressed it was a ‘very difficult thing to do’ and was not helped by the government ‘always effectively reducing our money’.

He said: “The demands for particularly social care, home to school transport, temporary accommodation, are always growing. That means we have got to try and be ever more efficient.”

The council boss said his authority had therefore been forced to ‘cut stuff in the back office’ as well as reducing councillors’ basic members’ allowance.

He explained the council was trying to reduce the number of roles in finance and ‘back office’ departments, while at the same time trying to recruit more staff in some areas such as social workers.

Councillor Tett was also asked about potentially cutting the jobs and salaries of higher paid officers and its senior leadership team.

He replied: “We are a £1.4 billion organisation. We are not a parish council. We have got an enormous range of responsibilities that are not just potholes.

“We go right up to national government, working with them on big issues. We need really good managers.”

But Councillor Tett added that his authority was ‘aware of the costs’ of its top execs and had recently moved deputy chief executive Sarah Ashmead into the role of director of children’s services, saying that her previous role would no longer exist.

The councillor was also asked about whether the council could build its own social housing, an idea floated by Labour Councillor Robin Stuchbury.

“It is not a good idea,” Councillor Tett replied, saying the council would need a ‘housing revenue account’ which is solely used for council housing and would allow tenants to ‘buy their home at a discount’.

The council does not own housing stock but instead works with housing associations or ‘registered providers’ to help house people.

Councillor Tett said: “We prefer the idea of a social landlord – a housing association effectively – providing that housing because then that housing stays as social housing rather than being bought by the tenant.

“We also, frankly, just don’t have the staff who can run a housing department. In the old days you would have hundreds and hundreds of staff running housing departments.”

On housing, Councillor Tett said Labour’s ‘attack on the green belt’ from the new government’s increased housing targets for Bucks was another issue that came up on the doorsteps.

The Tory leader also responded to some of the comments Nigel Farage made in a letter published by the Bucks Free Press.

Councillor Tett said the Reform UK leader’s claims ‘Bucks is broken’ were ‘ill-informed nonsense’ and that voting for Reform would likely to lead to a Labour-Liberal Democrat ‘coalition of chaos’.

He said: “For example, our refuse and recycling service has extremely high customer satisfaction, our schools are outstanding and one of the main reasons people chose to move to Bucks.”

The Tory leader said his council had £120 million budgeted for more road repairs and resurfacing after Farage also hit out at the state of the county’s highways, and that council tax had risen ‘far less than inflation’.

He added: “If Reform is seriously suggesting that investment in long term assets such as children’s homes, the Eden Shopping Centre etc. should be funded from day-to-day expenditure then this is financial madness and frankly shows that they have no competence for serious local government.”