Keith House, Liberal Democrats

“Tackling congestion, protecting green gaps, keeping Council Tax and preserving public services remain the priority of Eastleigh’s Liberal Democrats.

The Lib Team team has delivered a record breaking thirteenth year of real terms cuts in Council Tax, protecting services. It has done so without cutting services due to efficiency and commercial focus.

"The Council’s £200million of property investments, from the Ageas Bowl and its hotel, through retail and offices, annually produces £5.5million income. Without this focus, opposed by the Conservatives, taxes would have been hiked and services cut as in Conservative councils.

Tackling congestion matters, delivering the road improvements promised but not delivered by Government.]" The Lib Dems are taking forward housing where needed, yet protecting green gaps between towns and villages, as proved at a recent planning appeal at Butlocks Heath. The Council has negotiated funds for extensions to doctors’ surgeries in Hedge End and Botley, and for new schools including at Horton Heath, Work on the new Fleming Park Leisure Centre starts this week, following £1million of leisure improvements at Chandler’s Ford and Lowford’s new library.

Eastleigh Lib Dems’ record of investment and financial prudence over 20 years is the Borough’s best guarantee for a strong future.”

Martin Lyon, UKIP

“The underlying problem for everything in Eastleigh at the moment is the fact that there is no local plan and that is something we would strongly fight for.

“Without that we are at risk with developers and the infrastructure of the town will become much worse. There is not enough housing in the area at the moment which is already creating problems and the services that will suffer most will be the schools and GPs.

“It’s a squeeze with the budget all round at the moment and there is the concern that the borough council blames the county council and vice versa but we need to work together to make sure that the public doesn’t suffer.

“But I think for our party the most important thing is to make sure we get that local plan sorted out and then begin to work on the infrastructure.”

Graham Hunter, Conservatives

“For the Conservative party in Eastleigh we would like to work on having a more transparent council so that the residents know that what is going on with important developments and knew projects.

“It would make life a lot better for residents if there was a local plan but also if they had a party which was open about what they were doing, we want to give a balanced representation and work in a transparent way, we don’t believe it’s currently working as it should be.

“If we were able to take the majority we would immediately be addressing the local plan but also the debt accrued by the current council, who continue to borrow money which isn’t coming out of their budget it’s coming out of the public purse and it’s the people of Eastleigh who will have to pay.

“We would like to know exactly how much is being spent, at the moment we are being told its £154million, but with more developments coming it seems possible this could increase and that is a substantial amount of debt to put the town in.”

Shere Sattar, Labour

“The main problem in the area is the development and infrastructure.

No thought has been given about where these developments go because there is no local plan to follow at the moment developers can just choose where they want to go and that’s going to cause even greater problems in the future.

One thing that our party is very keen to do if we had a position of power in the council would be to focus on affordable housing, and using the money that the council has with developments instead on building those for young families, first time buyers and attract more residents to the town to then build the infrastructure.

“We think it’s really important also that more is done to support the school and doctor’s surgeries. But to do all this we need a place on the council.

“It would be beneficial to residents if there was a variety of parties in the council as there would be more political arguments around big issues and that in turn would produce the best outcome.

“The infrastructure however is the greatest problem and whatever happens this needs to be resolved very quickly.”