Nick da Costa’s recent article on local government inclusion at conference made for pleasant reading. However, our work to champion our local government work, has to exist beyond conference.

It is important because winning a greater number of councillors in any given area is crucial to winning more parliamentary seats. Crucially it goes beyond that. Every single councillor elected means that a greater number of people across our country get a hard-working local councillor standing up for them and their community and when we win control of councils, we can deliver life changing opportunities to local areas.

Inclusion of local government work within our comms grid to members.

Our emails are good at explaining what we are doing in parliament. However, as the third party in parliament we can only have so much impact.

So where can we communicate that we have had a direct impact on people’s lives? 

Through highlighting our local government work and the impact it can have on people’s lives to members, we could both increase the respect that local government has in the party but also increase the number of people who actually want to be local councillors.

Promote the work of our councils in the media.

I am a great believer that you can learn from your opponents, and whilst we share basically nothing in common with Reform, they have managed to make their councils and councillors newsworthy. Albeit often for the wrong reasons.

We should be shouting about the achievements of our councils and councillors. Whilst our Liberal Democrat-led councils are delivering for residents every day, our opposition councillors are also punching above their weight.

For example, Cllr Tom Astell, who is an opposition councillor in Hull and East Yorkshire managed to win some fantastic coverage for his work holding the Reform Mayor to account for his flexible interpretation of public finance regulations. Another example is councillor Michael Mullaney in Leicestershire who has hit out over reform chaos.

Champion getting more metro-Mayors and London Assembly Members elected.

Whilst we control more councils than the Conservatives, we are shockingly underrepresented in Holyrood, Cardiff Bay or regional government.

We have only ever won six larger seat elections (2x euro constituencies in 1994, South West for the London Assembly in 2024, London Region in the 2019 European Elections and the Watford and Bedford Mayoralties).

Whilst the fact that the MEP seats no longer exist is not the fault of the party. The fact that we have only got the Watford Mayor and South West seat should give us pause for thought.

Additionally, if you look at mayoral elections, we have historically performed poorly, in Cambridgeshire, we have only come second once, in Hull and East Yorkshire, we came second and in the West of England we have come third once.

As we move towards a model of unitaries and directly elected Mayors, it is incumbent on our party to take them seriously and win some. There are some winnable mayoralties being created and if we win one or two of them, then we can start to champion local government on a more national stage.

* Callum Robertson is a teacher and member of the Federal Board. He is a Watford Borough Councillor.