General Election: The Green Party views
With a General Election coming this year, voters in Suffolk Coastal want to know what the Green Party stands for locally and nationally. Our full election Manifesto will be published nearer the election date. Meanwhile here are our views and policies on key local issues and others with wider importance.
All are aimed at achieving a sustainable economy whose resources and opportunities are fairly shared, a clean and healthy environment, and a progressive approach to the challenges of climate change. In Suffolk Coastal we address issues about housing, education, rural transport, the controversial energy projects, and many other concerns that people in the constituency say have been neglected or ignored by the current Government and their local MP.
Please let us know your own ideas, opinions or questions by clicking on the contact button at the bottom of this page. This will send your message to our Parliamentary Candidate Julian Cusack, who will reply as quickly as possible.
You can also contact a Green councillor via the WHO WE ARE councillors page.
Benefits: they're clearly affordable, and urgently need reform
The government should provide a fair, fast and efficient benefits system. Low and uncertain income is affecting thousands of people in Suffolk Coastal every day. It's a major source of mental stress, poor health and family break-up.
Land use must change to benefit farmers and the environment
We believe there must be major changes in land use to restore our environment, improve food security and give farmers a sustainable future. We're calling for urgent introduction of a new national land use strategy.
Health, wellbeing and the NHS
The NHS has resounding public support, yet is in crisis. Years of neglect, underfunding and top-down interference by Conservative governments make immediate action essential. Because health is not a commodity to be bought and sold, the Green Party will roll back privatisation, abolish the failed and costly NHS internal market and allocate additional finance where needed urgently, including to worst-hit areas like nursing training, maternity, mental health and children's services. Dedicated NHS staff in hospitals, GP surgeries and other settings achieve miracles every day, and will be given fair pay and working conditions.
We'd take action on Sizewell C traffic issues
Sizewell C nuclear power station has planning consent, but is not yet funded. We think there are better ways to provide the country’s future energy needs. It may still be abandoned when the full costs and likely delays are taken into account.
If it does go ahead, we stand ready to support local communities with the impact of construction traffic, which could reach 600 HGVs per day on the B1122 Yoxford to Leiston road in the early years of the project before the Sizewell Link Road is completed.
We need to respond to climate change
The risk of severe heat waves, storms, droughts and floods is getting closer with every passing year. Suffolk has been lucky so far, but we need to prepare. We also need the UK government and our local authorities to go much faster on decarbonisation. Locally, we have suggested that the Council should aim to decarbonise the heating of existing council homes by 2030.
Our views on planning and housing
We aim to set targets for house building locally, not top-down, and with an increased focus on affordable homes.
We oppose the application at the Howlett Way site
Trinity College Cambridge is seeking outline planning permission for the construction of over 300 homes at the Howlett Way site between Trimley St. Mary and Trimley St. Martin. Green Party policy is clear that local communities should have much more influence over the allocation of sites for large scale housing.
Our views on LionLink and Sea Link
LionLink is a proposed 1.8GW inter-connector between Suffolk, the Netherlands and Dutch offshore wind farms. Sea Link is a proposed 2GW interconnector between Suffolk and Kent.
We promote offshore wind, but let's get it right
There's general agreement that more offshore wind farms are needed to help the UK transition to net zero. There's strong well-argued opposition to the proposed siting of the onshore infrastructure on the East Suffolk coast on multiple planning grounds.
Solar power and solar parks in East Suffolk
There are currently two main planning applications for 'Solar Parks' in East Suffolk. We have been contacted both by the developer seeking our support, and by some local residents who object to them or have significant concerns.
The social care crisis
Outside the Conservative Government there is a wide public, political and expert consensus that the adult social care system is in acute crisis. It faces annually increasing demand, is underfunded by central government, strains local authority finances and family budgets to breaking point, and is supplied principally by private businesses.
Education: How the Tories have failed our children
Conservatives in power at Westminster and in Suffolk have caused lasting harm to children's education. From closing the vital Sure Start programme to making tuition fees unaffordable, they have failed children all the way from infancy to their teenage years. Enforcing the wasteful and unaccountable Academy and Free School programmes, allowing school buildings to crumble, creating a narrow and rigid curriculum, selling off playing fields, all are examples of Tories putting private fee-paying schools first and State schools last or nowhere. But State schools are where 9 out of 10 children go.
Sizewell C: too expensive, too late
The decision to build new nuclear power stations in England and Wales was made by the Labour government in 2008, sixteen years ago. They could not forecast the rapid growth in renewable energy, the soaring costs of nuclear, nor the 2015 Climate Agreement whose targets cannot be met by the slow pace of nuclear construction. In 2008 wind and solar power were in their infancy, generating less than 10 million megawatt hours of electricity. Now they generate nearly 100 million and are accelerating every month, while nuclear new build has still not generated a single watt.
Rosebank oil and gas: A Tory-Labour climate crime
In 2022 the Government's official advisers the Climate Change Committee said that the UK should not develop any new oil and gas fields. In 2023 it announced publicly that such expansion "is not in line with the UK's net zero commitments". Instead of accepting this expert advice Rishi Sunak, with Labour's approval, is allowing a vast new oil and gas field in the North Sea.
Our water, our rivers: Privatisation's biggest scandal
In 2022 the authoritative, pro-business Financial Times wrote that "It's time to admit that water privatisation has been a failure", while the respected British Medical Journal called for renationalisation of water companies because of the dangers they pose to health. Since then, these companies have continued to pay obscene profits to their shareholders, not invested properly in repairs and infrastructure, and raised their prices as high as possible – all while pouring sewage into our rivers.
