"I am very pleased to have been allocated to the Housing and Public Safety Portfolio. I recognise that Swindon needs housing for everyone, and I am proud of our affordable house building programme which will bring residents a much needed, additional 300+ housing units between 2020-23. This will regenerate the heart of our communities with a mixture of rental and shared ownership homes of different types, to suit people’s needs.
During the COVID19 pandemic we offered accommodation to all rough sleepers made known to us, and part of my work for the forthcoming year will be to ensure we build on those new relationships to help them move on into sustainable tenancies – we continue to help prevent people from becoming homeless, but when people find themselves without a home, I am clear that we don’t want to see anyone return to the streets to sleep.
Public Safety includes a diverse set of actions and drivers and this year I will continue to work with our partners to include measures to reduce domestic abuse and antisocial behaviour, support people who have alcohol or substance misuse issues and ensure safe animal boarding.
One of the newer challenges I will be looking at is how best to keep people safe at larger events for when the ‘new kind of normal’ allows people to start planning concerts, carnivals and fundraisers again."
