James Miller, Confelicity Parliamentary candidate for Southend West and Leigh talks about his main priorities for Southend

I make no bones about being a Director of Adventure Island, Sealife Adventure, Radio Essex and numerous restaurants, because with humility, I have been lucky enough to understand how success is achieved.

As a Southend boy, born and bred, I am super-keen to pour any experience and knowledge I have into our city.

I stand representing the Southend Resident’s Party, Confelicity, which is devoted to a true local voice on the national stage.

What we stand for:

• Inspiring Southend residents to start their own businesses, applying their skills and knowledge to creating a city full of innovation and entrepreneurship to revitalise jobs and wealth creation. The council’s acquisition of Victoria Shopping Centre and Southend’s potential expansion of its high street markets present brilliant opportunities for low cost start-ups.

• Fighting against over-development due to lack of infrastructure and services and its encroachment onto our ever decreasing green spaces. Affordable housing on brownfield sites for locals - yes, but it is now time to acknowledge that we are getting close to full.

• Expanding capacity in Southend Hospital; fighting against current plans to transfer services to Basildon or Chelmsford; and valuing our health care workers properly. They are under-valued and under-paid, and that is a reflection on the value we have passively accepted for ourselves over many decades.

• City-wide mass promotion of the Special Constable scheme to recruit hundreds into the local police. There are many hot-spots that require constant presence, and this is a sure-fire way of ensuring it can be resourced. No excuses about funding - just Southend residents putting themselves forward in the name of the city!

• Promoting financial transparency so we can see where all our money has gone. The technology already exists, it is just a question of access to the information. We are paying the most tax we ever have and we can’t even turn on our street lights to max, cut our grass more than once a year, fix our our pot holes and pavements, and get our bins emptied more than once a week! We are a rich nation, albeit with a £2.5 trillion debt(!), but something is going very wrong at the top. It is time for us all to find out what is going wrong.

• Rid Southend’s sea of sewage by starting conversations with Anglian Water and the government to explore how we go about building a brand new sewage system fit for purpose. As it is, the current system is designed to allow sewage into our waters otherwise it would go into our homes and businesses during high rainfall. Southend should be built upon the water with Olympians showing off their prowess to the world! Instead, we lead the way in paddling and stone skimming!

• Ensure Southend United survives. With the brilliant consortium and devoted fans, the future is ready to be taken. We just need the right political decisions to taken to move this over the line. The previous owner must change his outrageous red-lines and get the deal done.
  

• Inspire civic pride! We need to tell our own story, and one that will inspire the next generation to perform great feats for our city. I am reading the story of Eric Kirkham Cole of EKCO, and what a visionary he was employing 7,000 people and building tech for the world! This is just one of a thousand stories that we need to unearth and spread the good word! As part of promoting civic pride, we would like to explore ways in which we can inspire one volunteer hour a week from residents performing tasks that could never be budgeted for, to help and support the city in any way they could. Imagine what a million hours could do to transform the city?
  

• And for Leigh residents, I would seek to rectify the issues surrounding LTC and ensure that its future is safe. There is no getting around it, change needs to happen!

For our full manifesto see:

https://www.southendconfelicityparty.co.uk/confelicitypartygeneralelectionmanifesto24