Merton needs Councillors who will listen and be honest and transparent about the choices to be made

WHAT WE'VE DONE

• Worked with the Council and achieved a significant number of improvements over the last 4 years - both big and small, as evidenced in this manifesto.
• Promoted the growing use of public questions in Council meetings - an innovation we persuaded the administration to adopt in the previous Council term.
• Pushed for a review of the Community Forums to examine how they can be made more relevant.
• Sought to convince the Council to return to publishing planning representations on their website.
• Persuaded Council to live-stream, and archive, all public meetings on YouTube.
• Unsuccessfully tried to stop Labour and the Conservatives changing the Council's constitution so they could block the Lib Dems from chairing scrutiny meetings!

WHAT WE'LL DO

• In Merton all major decisions made by the cabinet of lead councillors are scrutinised by a number of committees - the Lib Dems will stop the current practice whereby the governing party pick the Chairs of those committees.
• The Lib Dems will introduce reforms to allow residents' Community forums to operate more like peoples’ assemblies, directly contributing to local democracy.
• We’ll use consultation exercises to engage, educate and inform - winning hearts & minds before instituting changes such as Schools Streets and other traffic & parking measures.
• We’ll review the workings of the Council cabinet system & consult on returning to a committee structure.
• We pledge to take bold decisions, admit where we get it wrong and learn from our mistakes.