Jason Stockwood standing in Greater Lincolnshire mayoral election
On 1 May voters throughout Lincolnshire will decide the first elected mayor of the new Greater Lincolnshire authority. You can find more information about the election here and the candidates here.
Jason Stockwood, 54, is the former chairman of Grimsby Town FC and grew up in Grimsby
"I grew up in Grimsby on a council estate in a single-parent home. I'm not a career politician. My first jobs were on the docks, in a call centre, and as a waiter. Through hard work, I built a successful career as a businessman, creating thousands of jobs and investing in our local communities. One of the things that I'm most proud of is becoming a co-owner of my boyhood football club, Grimsby Town FC."
He says he will deliver better roads and transport
He said he will get a grip of the roads, buses and trains with more bus routes, affordable fares and a record number of potholes filled in.
He has pledged to strengthen pride and safety in the area
Mr Stockwood wants to strengthen pride and safety in the villages, towns and cityby cracking down on antisocial behaviour and cleaning up the high streets.
Mr Stockwood wants to stand up for public services
He said he will "Stand up for our public services against Reform politicians who have made it clear they want to scrap the NHS as we know it and replace it with private health insurance."
He also wants to protect the coastline and countryside
He said he will "Fight for our coast and countryside" by building durable flood defences" and reforming the planning system in partnership with local leaders and communities.
He says he will secure jobs
He said he will "Secure jobs for today and tomorrow by boosting skills" across the community and "driving investment" into the area.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Powys County Times
38 minutes ago
- Powys County Times
Powys councillors to be asked to explain meeting absences
TWO councillors will be asked to appear in front of Powys County Council's standards committee to explain why they have missed so many meetings. Reform's Cllr Karl Lewis, who defected from the Conservative group and is a former planning chair, is one of two councillors who will be asked to explain why they have not reached the 60 per cent threshold of meetings from May 16, 2024, to May 14 this year. Labour's Cllr Sarah Williams is the other. Members of the Standards committee at their meeting on Wednesday, June 18, heard that three councillors had failed to hit the 60 per cent attendance rate. Head of legal services and monitoring officer, Clive Pinney said that Cllr Josie Ewing (Liberal Democrat) had explained why her meeting attendance level had been 57 per cent. Cllr Ewing had been on maternity leave and had informed her group leader at the time, former council leader Cllr James Gibson-Watt, that her attendance would drop after returning from maternity leave while she found day care for her children. The committee accepted her 'very reasonable' explanation. Mr Pinney then brought up Cllr Lewis who had attended 59 per cent of meetings while Cllr Williams (Labour) had only attended 40 per cent. Cllr Karl Lewis Mr Pinney told the committee that letters asking for an explanation had been sent to Cllr Lewis on June 3, he had been asked during a phone-call conversation with democratic services officer Carol Johnson on June 12, and a further email reminder was sent in June 17, all of which had not received a response. Committee chairman and lay member, Stephan Hays asked Ms Johnson if Cllr Lewis had given an explanation verbally during their phone call. Ms Johnson said: 'He said he would get back to me about it.' Similarly, Cllr Williams had been contacted three times and asked to explain her absences. Mr Pinney told the committee that they had not had 'any communication' from her on the issue. Cllr Liz Rijnenberg (Labour) said: 'In these circumstances when someone has been contacted and not responded I wonder whether or not it would be appropriate for the group leader to check how they are and if there is anything that needs to be done in terms of support. 'It's unusual for someone not to respond at all, there could be something quite serious going on with that person.' Mr Pinney said that they have 'not traditionally' contacted group leaders, but this could be done in the future. Cllr Baverley Baynham (Powys Independents) said: 'I think we should ask them to come in front of committee and explain. 'Cllr Ewing has given a perfectly adequate explanation, as a committee we need to set the stall out and say it's not acceptable not to give a reason for not turning up. 'They have both had the opportunity to provide reasons.' Cllr Ian Harrison (Conservative) said: 'For me invitation seem a little bit weak. 'I would like the letter to be a little stronger and if you can't attend you need a very good reason why not, because we have professional standards to maintain and county councillors should be held accountable.' Member agreed that Cllrs Lewis and Williams will be asked to attend the next meeting of the Standards committee to explain themselves.
Telegraph
3 hours ago
- Telegraph
Four reasons why Labour will betray leaseholders
In a bid to win last year's election, the Labour party made a series of ambitious promises: build 1.5 million homes, slash NHS waiting times and crack down on antisocial behaviour. But arguably, the pledge that the Government will find hardest to deliver on is the vow to overturn Britain's centuries-old (and tremendously complex) leasehold system. Homeowners on these contracts have found themselves locked in crippling contracts that include uncapped service charges. By the time Britain went to the polls last July, Labour had already dropped an initial pledge to ban the practice within the first 100 days of taking office. The party's manifesto instead said it would 'bring the feudal leasehold system to an end'. Almost a year in, it is becoming increasingly clear that it won't happen any time soon – if indeed during this Parliament. In addition to banning new leasehold flats, the Government has promised to strengthen leaseholders' rights to buy their freehold, make commonhold the default tenure for homeownership, reduce ground rents to peppercorn and remove the threat of forfeiture – which can see leaseholders removed from a property if they do not pay ground rent. Some reforms were made as part of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act (2024) by the Conservatives – but a ban on leasehold only applies to new houses, meaning it brings no value to the almost five million people who already own leasehold homes. The move has been criticised as little more than lip service by critics. With property rights deeply entrenched in age-old legislation, has Labour bitten off far more than it can chew? Developers don't like commonhold – and the Government needs them to build flats Labour's plan to deliver 1.5 million new homes is already being derailed by a shortage of construction workers. If it axes new leasehold properties, it may remove an incentive for developers to build, explains Angelina Arora, a property solicitor for legal firm Osbornes. 'For developers, leasehold properties have been a reliable income stream – they know they can charge ground rent and have some kind of control. Commonhold will remove all those incentives, so what will motivate them to keep building?' Commonhold, with which the Government intends to replace leasehold on new and eventually existing properties, gives homeowners the freehold title to their units, and joint ownership of shared rights. The Government's white paper on leasehold reform suggests that for commonholds to become the standard, there must be market confidence in it first. However, this creates a vicious cycle, explains Harry Scoffin, founder of campaign group, Free Leaseholders. 'If you take that approach, commonholds will never have market confidence, as developers will always choose leasehold. You just need to bite the bullet and implement it.' As well as developers, lenders are very sceptical of commonhold, says Reema Chugh, a partner at law firm Hodge Jones and Allen. 'Lenders are conservative by nature – they like precedent and risk modelling. There are fewer than 20 commonhold developments in the UK – there is no established market, there are very few commonhold sales, so there is no reliable resale value meaning a higher lending risk.' Ms Churgh adds: 'With leasehold, lenders can step in if leases are forfeited due to a breach. Commonhold has no equivalent backstop. Lenders have less control in recovery scenarios. 'Until commonhold becomes mainstream, lenders will see it as risky, but it won't become mainstream until lenders support it – so it's a chicken and egg situation.' Scoffin points out that if only new properties are required to be commonhold, this could create a two-tier system, with the gap between the prices of flats and houses at its highest level in 30 years. 'Everybody will rush towards new flats, and nobody will want to touch existing leasehold ones. So existing leaseholders will be even more disadvantaged by the reforms,' he says. Removing marriage value and ground rents is incredibly controversial Marriage value is the increase in a property's worth when a leaseholder buys the freehold, or extends its lease once there are fewer than 80 years left on it. This makes extending a lease or purchasing the freehold much more expensive when there are fewer than 80 years left, with leaseholders paying 50pc of the increase in the value of their property to the freeholder – this can be tens of thousands of pounds, in some instances. The Government has pledged to abolish marriage value, which would make it significantly cheaper to extend short leases – but to do so is incredibly complicated. Some freeholders have argued that it is incompatible with their private property rights as laid out in the Human Rights Act 1998, with a judicial review set to take place later in the summer. 'The 80-year rule creates a ticking time bomb – it causes stress, erodes property value, encourages predatory behaviour and hinders market function. It makes it harder to sell and remortgage flats with short leases, which creates market stagnation. '[Abolishing marriage value] would represent a major power shift, which is why it's hotly contested. Reforming it is essential to making the system fairer,' says Chugh. Almost a million leases have escalating ground rents, according to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) regulator. This means the annual charge increases over time and experts have warned that these clauses are turning flat owners into 'mortgage prisoners'. The Government has also made the ambitious pledge to cap ground rents – but in doing so may have offered millions of leaseholders false hope. As with marriage value, freeholders are fighting ground rent changes on human rights grounds – and modifying rights enshrined in law is likely to be no easy or speedy feat, adds Chugh. 'Retrospectively removing contractual rights is likely to be very challenging… the mechanisms to do it are really unclear. 'Ground rents are also often tied up in investment products [such as pensions]. If they retrospectively remove it, compensation schemes could be required, at a huge cost to taxpayers.' Samuel Hughes, of think tank Centre for Policy Studies, is critical of the plan to retroactively change contracts. '[This is an attempt to] let leaseholders buy freeholds for less than they are worth. Some freeholders are charities, so you're giving people the right to buy charity assets at below market values,' adds Samuel Hughes of think tank Centre for Policy Studies. 'There is such a lack of clarity from the Government – it hasn't been well thought out' Legal professionals bemoan a lack of guidance and clarity around what would constitute a seismic change to the foundations of property law in this country. 'So many people are affected – leaseholders, developers, lenders, freeholders, legal practitioners,' says Arora of law firm Osbornes. 'When people come to us, we just don't know the answers. Rather than advising our clients, in order to protect ourselves we can only give them the information we have and tell them they need to take a view. Ultimately, we just don't know. 'Regardless of the Government [in power], this is not something that can change overnight. There are so many practical things to think about before anything can come into effect. All UK Finance lending regulations will have to change. We deal with lease extensions on a daily basis – what's going to happen when leases effectively don't exist? There's such a lack of clarity. 'Normally there are seminars held with legal practitioners to assist with reforms, discussing what is potentially going to happen. We've had nothing. How long can people wait?' Another of the Government's many leasehold reform promises is to ban forfeiture, which gives freeholders the right to evict a leaseholder if they break a condition of the lease, such as not paying ground rent. 'Forfeiture is deeply embedded in leasehold,' adds Chugh. 'There is no clear legal remedy which allows freeholders to take a flat back over minor arrears – so it will require a longstanding rewrite of landlord rights.' 'Is there the political will from Number 10 to make these changes?' Scoffin, a leasehold reform campaigner, is sceptical of the political drive to make this happen. He points out that Labour promised leasehold reform in 1995 in a document called 'The End to Feudalism'. Yet there has been little progress since. Scoffin says: 'The history of leasehold reform is that if there isn't a strong steer from Number 10, it's not going to happen. The Conservatives made some promises to leaseholders in 2019, but then it was dragged through the whole of the course of the Parliament. 'We're really concerned that we're going to have a repeat of where we were with the Conservatives, where there are a lot of great announcements, and then there isn't the progress that we need – and then suddenly we're at the end of the parliament, and they haven't got it through. 'The [Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government] says there is a bill coming later this year, but that's not strictly correct – it's a draft piece of legislation. The Government could sit here for a year or two analysing responses, and then we're back here at the general election. 'Is Number 10 really giving [housing secretary] Matthew Pennycook full backing? Are they bringing in more brilliant brains and getting a crack team assembled to bring this through? 'Successive Governments haven't prioritised this – they leave it too long to bring in major reforms, and it falls on the next Government. Leaseholders cannot wait until the next election to stop being looted in their homes – if they do, voters will not thank [Labour].' Arora concurs that leaseholders may be waiting some time before any meaningful changes occur. 'We're looking at late 2025 for the draft Bill, but that doesn't mean it will come into force – it will still need to become a fully fledged bill. I don't think the commonhold will come into effect for another few years. 'It just hasn't been well thought out. I think these issues are coming up, and they're realising they're way over their heads.'
New Statesman
4 hours ago
- New Statesman
At what cost assisted dying?
David Smith MP (photo by House of Commons / Laurie Noble) and Blair McDougall MP (photo by House of Commons / Roger Harris) As the Assisted Dying Bill enters its final stage in Parliament, far too many unanswered questions remain about its final shape. What we feel certain of is that any new system will place significant costs on our NHS, whilst also creating a system of private provision that will profit financially from ending people's lives. We believe this nationalisation of cost alongside the privatisation of profit is deeply antithetical to the values of a Labour Government. What we do know is this bill seeks to profoundly alter the nature of the NHS and will change what we mean by the term 'health care' in this country: from 'Do No Harm' to 'Assist Death'. The ethical, practical and financial implications of this are essentially unquantifiable. Yet, despite this totemic shift in how our society cares for the vulnerable and dying, we have no meaningful understanding of how the system will be implemented beyond the vaguest of assessments. In the determination to pass the principle of assisted dying into law, supporters of the bill have swept aside well-founded concerns, such as the protection of children, and left current and future governments to work out the detail. Even minor amendments to improve the bill by strictly banning advertising in the same way we do for tobacco or cancer drugs have been rejected, leaving the door open for the marketisation of death for private profit. This introduction of the market into one of the most profound areas of our lives, how they end, has received little attention in the public debate. When the Labour Party first created the NHS, its architect Nye Bevan was concerned about the commodification of care. He worried about the role of the market in extending life, today our concern is about the potential role of the market in ending it. What has become clear in this process is that even minor changes or improved protections to any assisted dying regime would also impose massive, unfunded costs upon our NHS. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe The Impact Assessment currently budgets for just two and half hours of online training on assisted dying for NHS staff, allows a junior doctor rather than an experienced consultant to lead on assisting someone in their death, and for that doctor to do it on their own, rather than being supported by a nurse. Increasing that training by just a couple of hours, insisting that a senior doctor oversees the process and that they are accompanied by a nurse would be reasonable and minor changes. Yet just these slight alterations alone would see the price of assisted dying to the NHS increase by tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds every year. We are repeatedly reminded that politics is about choices. These unfunded costs to the NHS will incentivise, even necessitate, private organisations to get involved in providing assisted dying. Private 'healthcare' companies delivering assisted suicide will have a duty to their shareholders to maximise 'sales' to the NHS for 'service delivery'. This will sit in sharp contrast to an effective, compassionate and yet underfunded hospice and palliative care sector which only receives 30 per cent of its funding from central government. All life seeks to avoid pain and suffering; it's at the heart of what influences many of our most basic decisions, and our desire not to allow other people to suffer is an essential part of our shared humanity. That's why for so many the assisted dying bill before Parliament feels like a compassionate choice. Given the country's stretched public services, its fragile finances and the inevitable commercial alternatives, an assisted dying regime will end up being not about compassion, but about the brutal logic of the balance sheet and the marketisation of death and dying. We risk creating a world in which, instead of supporting vulnerable people to live, a utilitarian choice will be made that weighs the cost of one life against the needs of the many, often finding that it is simpler and more efficient to support them to die. As new Labour MPs we were elected on the promise of change for our country, of rejuvenated public services, and a restored NHS alongside improved public finances. We would hope to have invested time debating how to properly fund the palliative care sector, rather than how to end people's lives. This is what a compassionate country does to stand in solidarity with those suffering at the end of their lives We were not elected to introduce a system that flies in the face of the principles enshrined in the NHS's foundations by the Labour Government of Bevan and Atlee, putting at risk their and our Labour Party's greatest achievement. Related
