"You should be able to disagree well"

Cllr Alister Brady is co-leader of the Labour Group at Kent County Council. Steven met him in his Canterbury division, where they discussed representing Kent's only city, whether he misses former KCC leader Roger Gough, and if he still works with Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield...

What is your official occupation? 
I am a Kent county councillor and a Canterbury city councillor.

Does that pay enough, or do you need to do anything else?
I'm also on the Kent and Medway Fire and Rescue Authority, which is part of KCC. Kent county councillors must sit on that, and that gives a small wage.
There is an argument that, in local authorities, councillors aren't paid enough to do the role. You can do the role as much as you can or as little as you can, but nobody's going to say we want more money, because you'll be voted out and be a laughing stock. You just make do and get on with it. I have a partner who works at the university, who's very understanding, but when I became a councillor five years ago, I wanted to do it properly and throw myself into it properly. My hat goes off to people who have a full-time job and do it. It would be wrong to say that I don't think that's possible because there's some good councillors in districts and at county level who are able to have a professional career and be a councillor. 
But there's only so many hours in a day. I wanted to be able to give that my all. 

Which division are you the councillor for? 
Canterbury City North. I would say the best division in Canterbury. It's the best division because it's home. I moved there in 1988 as a 12-year-old boy. My mum still lives at the house we moved to in the division. My sister, with niece and nephew, still lives there. Not in the same house, but in the division. My mother-in-law lives in the division. I've moved to the outskirts, but hopefully I'm moving this year, fingers crossed, back into the middle. We go from Westgate Tower all the way up to the university.

Which area or ward are you the borough councillor for? 
I'm Chartham & Stone Street, which is where I live now, and that's on the outskirts of my division. It's split slightly and that's why when we have local government reorganisation, LGR, it's good to have one council that is on everything, because at the moment I focus on housing, parking, waste collection and environment, the local economy within Chartham & Stone Street, and then I focus on adult social care, children's services, education, highways, disposal, et cetera. in my division. 

Could you give us an example of a resident coming to you with an issue? What issue would you deal with as a borough councillor, and which issue would you deal with as a county councillor? 
Mostly, you get planning issues for borough. That's probably the fundamental. I'm fortunate within my division and within my borough. Within my borough, I have seven parish councils, and you're able to interact with the parish councils to then find out what needs to be done there. I'm fortunate enough I don't have any parishes in my division. There's some incredible residents' associations and I work with them on projects. The individual casework comes through mostly potholes, road issues, flooding, and this is all division, and then trying to save a pub in Harbordown. 

Does Canterbury have a Local Plan? 
We've gone to Regulation 19 for the draft 2042-43 Local Plan. At the moment, we’re stuck with the 2017 Local Plan. Any planning issue comes in, you've got to go to that, but we're at the last consultation stage on that Local Plan within the City Council and there's so many good things in there compared to what was in the 2017 one.

Why do you need a new one if it was less than 10 years old? 
Because it's like the Forth Bridge. Once this gets ratified, you start working on another one to better it. Things change, the landscape changes, governments change, political affiliations and who runs the council changes. It's an ongoing process. 

A big thing that's occurring at the moment is local government reorganisation (LGR). Do you have different views on LGR if you have a borough councillor hat on and if you have a county councillor hat on? Or do you view it as the same thing? 
The good thing with my party and district, the Canterbury Labour Group and the Kent Labour Group is we're a team, and LGR for Canterbury means the same for LGR in Kent. LGR makes complete sense. When you look at the disconnect and silo working between public health, adult social care and housing, planning. One of the biggest determinants of health is if you've got a home. To not have those two things together doesn't make sense. Bringing that together makes complete sense. At the moment we've got 14 councils in Kent. I prefer 4D purely because that keeps local identity, and that's incredibly important. People care where they live, and they care about their communities, and that's why 4D is big enough to be able to deliver the services efficiently in the right way and small enough to keep that local identity.

You're also the leader of the Labour Group on Kent County Council?
I would like to say co-leader. There are only two of us. People would laugh at me saying co-leader. Connie Nolan, who is Canterbury City South, we are an incredible team, and there's no point in me saying I'm the leader and you're my deputy, but within KCC, they don't understand that they don't have that within the constitution. We're co-leaders, but I'm the spokesperson. I'm the one that gets up and gives the speeches, and then I put a crosshair on me, and I'm the one that gets argued at and challenged.

The group is smaller than it was before the KCC election. Having had time to process what happened, in your opinion, why did Labour not do well?
It was fallout from the general election. We had an incredible result. I believe, six months leading up to that, because we were so much the favourites, the Conservative government didn't do the best things for the country, putting policies, managed the books in the best way, because they knew that whoever comes in, it would be a headache for whoever came in. When we did come in, and the difference between KCC officers who work for every councillor is we can see the books, we can see the evidence. Civil servants work for the government. They don't have to disclose everything to every MP and opposition parties. When we came in and looked at how bad the situation was, we couldn't get everything done straight away. When they vote on hope and change, people want really quick fixes. When you've been dealt a really bad hand by the previous government, it takes a while to change that. That was the impact. Nobody wanted a Liz Truss budget. Everybody's mortgages doubled. We saw what happened to the markets. It was about not spooking the markets. Unfortunately, we are hostage to them. We weren't able to implement all the things. The opposition, the previous government, and other parties could say, "You lied to everybody" as loud as they could. National press picked that up, and everybody was annoyed.

We're seeing green shoots

Why did Reform do so well? 
At the ballot box, they decided not to go for the major parties. Conservatives broke the country, and they had been in KCC for 24 years, and we couldn't deliver anything from day one, so they went for an alternative. But what we saw within the leaflets and what we see now with Reform is they put a lot of misinformation in the leaflets, and people went, “We'll give you a try,” but after a year of chaos, people are turning away from them.