Buckinghamshire local elections 2025: Councillor slams social care crisis

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

Councillor Robin Stuchbury said: “Buckinghamshire Council needs the Labour Party because, frankly, whatever the election results, it needs governance and scrutiny.”

The 61-year-old, who represents Buckingham West, said Labour campaigners were getting a ‘positive’ reception on the doorsteps in Conservative-controlled Bucks.

However, the party has failed to stand enough candidates for each of the 97 seats at these elections and has put forward ‘paper candidates’ in some wards.

Asked about this, Councillor Stuchbury said: “I walk away from that question, because simply, we have three Labour MPs in Buckinghamshire. People took a vote at the last election to walk away from the Conservative Party.”

The candidate, who previously worked in agriculture, was also asked about the unpopularity of the Labour government’s decisions to cut pensioners’ winter fuel payments and to hike taxes including on national insurance contributions.

Although these are national policies, Bucks Council has taken action on both issues, having rolled out a campaign for pensioners to apply for pension credit and warning that tax rises put ‘immense pressure’ on the authority’s budget.

But Councillor Stuchbury said the May elections were about local, not national, issues, and questioned why Buckinghamshire’s Tory leaders had been vocal about the current government but silent on the policies of previous Conservative administrations.

He added: “Where were the council when we had changes to the bedroom tax? Where were they when we had benefit cuts to parents? Where were they when housing cuts were placed on poor people in the community?”

Asked about what local issues were facing the county and its residents, the candidate said the council had failed to deliver its local plan by 2025.

The plan will control where development takes place, and which areas needs protecting and is now expected to be adopted at the end of 2027.

Councillor Stuchbury said: “That plan has to be long-reaching and has to meet the needs of the whole of Buckinghamshire.

“Without that plan we are not going to provide the accommodation that the younger generation need.”

The candidate also said it was ‘disappointing’ that a council decision in 2020 to look at the business case for council-owned social housing has ‘never seen the light of day’.

The council’s Tory leaders have repeatedly said it would not be financially viable for the authority to own or build social housing, but Councillor Stuchbury said the issue needed to be revisited in the next council term.

He added: “It’s clear Buckinghamshire is a very expensive place to live. My children’s generation haven’t got access to the housing market.

“It can’t be right that they are having to pay private rents because they don’t qualify for social housing.”

The councillor also spoke about the rising number of education, health and care plans (EHCPs) maintained by the council for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

The growing list of families waiting for assessments, compounded by a shortage of educational psychologists, has resulted in a string of ombudsman decisions against the council and compensation payouts to parents.

Councillor Stuchbury said: “This cannot continue. The council have had over a decade to get this sorted out.”

The councillor also addressed the adult social care crisis claiming services had been ‘underfunded for over a decade’ in Bucks.

Local authorities across the country are struggling to provide the service amid increased demand, vacancies and rising costs.

Bucks Council is also facing difficulties, with adult social care being one of its main budgetary pressures, and last year the authority condemned the ‘failure’ of successive governments to tackle crisis.

Asked how he would improve the situation, Councillor Stuchbury said the government must take a ‘pragmatic view’ on social care, adding: “The funding of its needs to be from the NHS.”

Another issue the councillor raised was the ‘appalling’ pay of teaching assistants, warning that the council is ‘losing them’.

“They are advertising constantly for people to come and be teaching assistants,” he said, “Without them in schools, all the children in the classroom won’t get a good education. Because a teacher’s job is really difficult.”

The Labour member said the ‘appalling state’ of Buckinghamshire’s roads was another issue on voters’ minds.

“The public are unhappy,” he said, “Does FixMyStreet really fix my streets? Or is it just turning into a social media app for those people to vent their frustration?”

As well as criticising the council over issues like potholes, Councillor Stuchbury is happy with some of its services.

“To be fair, the refuse collection in my own area in North Buckinghamshire has been splendid,” he explained.

The Labour member also said Conservative cabinet members responsible for adult social care, Angela Macpherson, and children’s services, Anita Cranmer, had tried ‘very hard’.

He suggested though that they did not have the necessary resources from the council to ‘succeed’ but said he ‘held them in great respect’.

On the outcome of the elections, Councillor Stuchbury believes Labour will do ‘extremely well’ because ‘we are not Reform UK, the Conservative Party or the Liberal Democrats’.

He added: “We are normal people, ordinary people who have a work ethic and have been involved in public life for a long period of time.

“Many of us come from a background of the services that we wish to deliver, and we have an understanding of why people are unhappy.”