Sam Corcoran Re-elected as Cheshire East Council Leader

On Wednesday 18th May at the Annual Cheshire East Council meeting Sam Corcoran was re-elected for a fourth year as leader of Cheshire East Council.

Sam Corcoran, Labour Councillor for Sandbach Heath & East, said, “I am grateful and honoured to be re-elected as Leader of Cheshire East Council with cross-party support. This is an opportunity to reflect on how things have changed over the last 3 years and how things might change over the next year.

When I became Leader of Cheshire East Council in May 2019 all the senior positions were filled by temporary appointments. There were 2 posts held by people costing the council over £1,000 a day each. Now all the senior posts at Cheshire East Council are held by permanent employees. That makes a huge difference – and it has taken a lot of time and effort.

On finances - We inherited a budget that contained ‘unachievable savings’ and was only balanced for one year with multi-million pound black holes in the subsequent years. We now have a fully balanced 4-year Medium Term Financial Strategy, enabling us to plan ahead. There are still severe financial constraints on all upper tier councils, but at least now Cheshire East Council has a secure foundation.

In 2019 there were numerous police investigations swirling around the council, including one matter referred to the Crown Prosecution Service. Since May 2019 there have been no new police investigations and now – for the first time in 6 years – there are no active police investigations into Cheshire East Council.

Cheshire East Council was a council that featured regularly in Private Eye’s Rotten Boroughs section – now it doesn’t.

Now Cheshire East Council has been selected to be a Trailblazer council for the government’s social care reforms and was recognized for its work on infection control during the pandemic.

In 2020 the independent Local Government Association carried out a review of the council and reported a transformed – that’s their word – a transformed culture and the “remarkable progress that has been made in improving workforce culture” “illustrated by clear leadership and commitment including the determination of councillors to drive and prioritise improvement”

Six years ago there was a flood of speculative housing applications on greenfield sites particularly in the south of the borough – because the council didn’t have up-to-date housing policies or a five-year housing land supply. The good news is that we do now have up-to-date housing policies and a robust five-year housing land supply. So we can now refuse speculative housing applications. However, we cannot overturn the planning permissions that have already been granted – and those are putting pressure on local services.

On Highways – there is a backlog of maintenance work across Cheshire East totalling well over £100M, which has arisen over the last decade or more.

The last council budget, in response to consultation, included an additional £19m capital investment in planned highways maintenance over the next three years, funded by borrowing. £7M of that is being spent this year – this will make a difference, but the overall backlog is well over £100M. We really need central government to fix our funding to fix our roads, but last year the government cut its funding for Cheshire East highways repairs by £3M.

Climate Change is the greatest challenge facing our generation. As soon as I became Leader of the Council in May 2019, Cheshire East Council recognised the climate emergency declared by Parliament and committed to being carbon neutral by 2025 – one of the most ambitious targets in the country. The Council published an Environment Strategy and detailed Carbon Action Plan setting out how it would become carbon neutral. Since then regular reports on progress have been published and the Council is on track to meet the target of being carbon neutral by 2025.

But Cheshire East Council itself is only responsible for 1% of the emissions in the area. So last year the Council signed up to the UK100 pledge to make the whole borough carbon neutral by 2045. Do have a look at the work of the Cheshire & Warrington Sustainable & Inclusive Growth Commission involving industry major landowners, councils and other organisations. 

The Commission’s proposals have been published at:

https://cheshireandwarrington.com/what-we-do/sustainability/sustainable-and-inclusive-growth-commission/

The work is ongoing.”