We are starting a series of interviews with South Kesteven District Council cabinet members following May’s local elections, which significantly changed the political makeup of the council.
The Cabinet is the main decision-making body of the council and is responsible for making policies and setting the budget.
This week we speak to the cabinet leader and council leader, Councilor Richard Cleaver.
Coun Cleaver, 63, of the Democratic Independent Group, became leader after the local elections. He joined the district council in 2021 after winning a by-election in the Stamford St Johns ward. He is also a county councillor.
His experience includes working as a university administrator in London and in IT after moving to Stamford in 1997. He and his wife also ran a pub in Stamford for several years.
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You have been the leader of the council for several months. How would you describe your experience as a leader so far?
It’s going very well. The cabinet team is settling in, becoming a team, working very hard together. They share aspirations, share frustrations, but always work together as a team. We are indeed progressing very effectively so far. There is a very strong desire that, having effectively taken control of the council, we now need to make it work. People were elected because they wanted to make a difference, whether they ran the council or not. So having that extra empowerment of being part of a ruling majority is something they don’t want to fail. There’s a lot of positivity with people reaching out and saying, can we do this, how can we achieve this. It’s really refreshing. Getting people to work together is something you sometimes have to work on, but in this case it happens organically because a lot of people are new, fresh and enthusiastic. They have new ideas and the place is buzzing.
What are the challenges facing Grantham and what do you aim to achieve for the town?
I think there’s probably less hold on Grantham than other towns in Lincolnshire and that’s where my positivity comes from because I see Grantham being well placed to go forward. We will reach out to the business community and get involved in completing the town center schemes for which we have government money. But it just seems that post-Covid no one has taken it up and run with it to make the city center more attractive, vibrant and people feel safe about it. It seems just waiting to be done. You just capture that mood. We need to make sure we manage the growth that will come with all the planned housing. We know this will happen, so let’s sort out the health services that are needed with this growth. We have to push hard for that. This is a real concern for people. We should just hit the start button and start running, if that’s not too idealistic. We are fighting for infrastructure. If you look at Grantham Hospital, if you look at further and higher education, Grantham will make that step change because of the amount of housing growth. Let’s not pretend it’s not big. This change means you start thinking about major improvements to the hospital service, it means you start talking about a university centre, if not something bigger. You only have to look at how Lincoln University has transformed Lincoln.
What problems need to be solved in Stamford?
I’m more in tune with Stamford as I’ve lived here for so long. The issues, especially in Stamford, is affordable housing, there’s still an issue here for people who were born here and who want to buy their first home here, but they can’t afford it, and that’s a problem. One of my big issues that I dive deep into is how we can make sure that affordable housing schemes are actually affordable. When we have this affordable housing agreement on a large estate, if we can’t achieve what we need to achieve, then we need to call on Michael Gove and the government to change the rules. The other big problem at Stamford is the protection of the green, because as our plans stand at the moment, and because of Stamford’s odd position with borders on three sides, we are now practically built right up to the borders. The SK local plan has very little space to put more houses on top of what is already planned so my argument has always been that the green spaces that are left should be fully protected and if we can get public access to them then that would be a bonus. We rely on tourism. Our production is gone. It’s naive to think he’ll come back. We need to make sure that the sites identified in the occupancy plans are actually being developed for occupancy. People want local jobs. We need this flow of good jobs for people so that they don’t have to travel to Peterborough, London or Leicester to have a good or well-paid job. There are heritage issues, protecting our conservation area, stopping HGVs going through the city unnecessarily or in areas where they shouldn’t be driving. There is also the issue of GPs. It has been more than two years since Lakeside was rated inadequate. Two more checks since then and still needs improvement. There is the issue of patient choice and it is annoying that other politicians will not support the patient being able to choose their GP services. I haven’t heard any of our local MPs come out and say that. On paper there is a choice because there are three GP practices that have Stamford in their catchment, but it is not a realistic choice because the two that everyone wants to move to are full.
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What are your ambitions for the district council in the next few years?
I am passionate about local democracy, about making democracy work and improving people’s lives. Restoring people’s faith in local democracy and in politicians is really important to me because I’ve spent so much of my life seeing it in decline. Now that I’m 63, I’d like to put some faith back into something. Democracy only works if you participate and if people are well informed, not ill informed. If you ever look at my Facebook page or my Twitter feed going back two years, most of it is informative, not opinionated. I want people to know the truth. I want people to respond and participate, so I’m absolutely passionate about restoring faith in politicians, that’s what makes democracy work. This is not particularly aimed at South Kesteven. But it is important because it should also bring the community together. Community cohesion is really, really important. Then people accept what needs to be done because they are well informed and know that it needs to be done. This is the way to get out of the divisive politics we have. There is always more that unites us than divides us. The practicalities are that we need to ensure housing growth, which should bring economic growth and at the same time improve people’s quality of life. This may sound idealistic, but it is what needs to happen.
Are we moving away from politics to a more conciliatory council?
Arguments that are not really important to the people who elected us, I hope will be dropped. The public wants to hear about the good things we want to do. We want our council tax payers, our residents, to respond to the things we propose to do. I would much rather see much, much more response to the public consultations we run on all sorts of issues about how we spend our money and how we regulate things than to have a lot of public reaction to stories of councilors misbehaving or councilors saying inappropriate things in Twitter or Facebook. So I think it’s changed a little bit. I know you can never take party politics out of it because we have so many party politicians across the House so there will always be a certain amount of political banter at full council meetings and that is inevitable but I think that will be toned down and I think it will be less personal in terms of what people say to each other in the room. And that’s a good thing.