Meet Jacob Jefferson, Conservative Candidate for Bushey North Ward in the May ‘23 local elections.

Mr Jefferson is an executive at a company called Meeting Place.  They specialise in helping developers gain planning permission.  On their slick corporate website they boast about successes such as securing planning permission for a client to build a solar farm on green belt land (that may sound familiar to some residents of Radlett).

Among their clients they list the Hertfordshire Growth Board, of which Hertsmere Council is a key member represented by the Council Leader and MD.  (Huge potential conflicts of interest here.)

Meeting Place also arrange ‘networking’ gatherings for key figures in the development world to meet key planners at local authorities.  This can be seen as a form of ‘soft lobbying’ and influence gathering.  Here is Hertsmere’s Head of Planning at one of their events.

Now, it’s no surprise that Hertsmere Conservatives are looking to stack the council chambers with people who profit from helping developers gain planning permission.  Anybody who has followed the saga of Cllr Paul Morris and the South Herts Business Club knows that this is their modus operandi.  It is what led to them producing a developer led, rather than resident led local plan which they had to shelve after nearly 18,000 objections from members of the public.

What is more surprising is Mr Jefferson’s candour in a recent blog published on the company’s corporate website.  In his blog he openly admits that the Tory claim that they will protect 100% of local green belt is undeliverable.

In his revealing blog, entitled “The Future of Hertsmere’s Local Plan”, written shortly after the shelving of the failed Draft Plan, Jefferson states that:

One of the main issues in Hertsmere is the severe lack of brownfield land, which means the vast majority of building will have to take place on the green belt.

This shows us what the Hertsmere Tories really believe.  Despite their election materials trying to convince people that the green belt is safe under their stewardship.

Labour has pledged to protect 99% of the green belt.  We believe that all required housing can be delivered in the remaining 1% of primarily low grade green belt land close to the M25 motorway.  We are being honest with local people.  We could have made a populist pledge to protect 100% but we won’t make pledges we can’t deliver.  We are also not in the pocket of property developers or seeking to elect their advocates and lobbyists to the Council to support their interests.

Mr Jefferson’s blog is a real slap in the face to those 18,000 local residents who campaigned successfully to scrap the failed Tory Draft Local Plan.  He writes:

It still leaves two-thirds of that [last election turnout] who did not send in opposition to the Plan.  That is not to say that there are 35,000 YIMBY enthusiasts out there in Hertsmere but it does show that there are opportunities – even in what may seem like an immensely hostile environment to development – to engage residents who could support applications in high numbers.  This group wasn’t given a fair platform last time round, which presents both a challenge and an opportunity for those of us in the built environment sector to find the favourable groups who do exist.

This is an astonishing position for a potential local councillor to take.  He appears to be saying that the Council should have stacked the consultation towards developers and their supporters.  Of course the consultation was totally fair.  If anything it was stacked in the other direction as it neglected neighbourhood and resident meetings in favour of online surveys and forms.

There is one thing Mr Jefferson says in his blog that we wholeheartedly agree with.  He provides us with some of his own local political analysis:

Looking ahead to the 2023 Local Elections, there is every chance that the Conservative Party could lose their majority on the Council, especially given the state of the national polls.

And of course he is absolutely right.  One of their own candidates has the candour to admit that they are on the verge of losing their grip on Hertsmere Council.  He doesn’t make the link between this threat and their ongoing failure to listen to local people over and above their developer friends.

At Hertsmere Labour we thank Mr Jefferson for his openness and honesty.  Local people can read his musing in full here and make up their own minds about whether to trust the Tory election pledges to prevent 100% of the green belt.  Either way, this is one candidate who is quite literally on the side of developers and not local people.

Use all your votes for Labour on 4 May.