Last week at Liberal Democrat Conference, I was delighted to pass an amendment to our party strategy making clear that, if we are serious about growing our party, we must become more relevant to people living in urban areas, diverse communities and younger generations.

Our recent electoral successes give us an extraordinary platform. But we cannot be satisfied with consolidating our support only where we are already strong. We should be ambitious about winning and governing in cities and diverse communities across Britain too.

For Southwark Liberal Democrats, this is not just a discussion about party strategy. We are already putting it into practice.

Following May’s elections, Liberal Democrats entered a Joint Administration with the Southwark Green Party, ending 16 years of majority Labour rule.

This week we marked 123 days in office. We are demonstrating what Liberal Democrats can achieve in one of the most diverse and densely populated urban boroughs in Britain.

We have announced the return of Community Councils, putting neighbourhood democracy and devolved decision-making back at the heart of the council. We have reintroduced One Stop Shops, announced community skips, invested more in community safety and created a free school uniform bank for families who need it most.

We have launched an empty homes task force to get council homes back into use, secured a better deal from developers of student accommodation to fund local community projects and defended our affordable housing requirements.

We have saved a mental health service and Dementia Adviser Service, announced £1.5 million of emergency support for Southwark’s voluntary and community sector and invested tens of millions into new council homes.

We are also demonstrating what a proudly liberal approach to equality can look like in local government.

We are developing an LGBTQ+ action plan, have stood alongside Southwark’s trans community in challenging the Government’s EHRC Code of Practice, and are installing a permanent memorial to James Pratt and John Smith, the last two men executed in England for consensual same-sex intimacy.

At Council Assembly last week, we passed our Liberal Democrat motion calling for closer ties with the European Union, with the eventual aim of the UK rejoining as a full member.

There is a wider lesson here for our party.

We should be immensely proud of our success in suburban, rural and smaller-town communities. But we should be equally ambitious for urban Britain.

That means talking confidently about the issues shaping life in our cities: the cost of living, housing crises, homelessness, renters’ rights, public transport, community safety, inequality and climate change.

It also means ensuring younger people and Britain’s diverse communities hear from us, see themselves represented in our party and know that liberalism has something meaningful to offer them.

We now need to put the party strategy we agreed into action. We need to organise, experiment, communicate differently and demonstrate what Liberal Democrats can deliver when entrusted with power.

We should be ambitious about where this takes us. In May, across Bermondsey and Old Southwark constituency, Liberal Democrats won the popular vote and elected 12 councillors, more than all the other parties combined. It shows the potential for our party in diverse, urban communities. We are now determined to build on that success and fight to win Bermondsey and Old Southwark back at the next General Election.

We are only 123 days into Southwark’s Joint Administration. There is an enormous amount still to do and difficult decisions ahead.

But Southwark Liberal Democrats are already showing that our party can win, govern and deliver in a diverse inner-city borough.

Conference has given us a strategy for broadening our party’s appeal. In Southwark, we intend to help prove that it can be done.

* Victor Chamberlain is the Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader of Southwark Council, Vice Chair of Federal Council and Liberal Democrat Vice Chair of the Neighbourhoods Committee at the Local Government Association