Clive Jones Interview Pauline InterviewJorgensen

BY NICK MARR AND BY JACKY HAYLER EXCLUSIVE

Nick Marr: ‘ You had an outstanding local election victory, lets talk about that how did that happen

CJ “ Well we held eight seats the we had won four years ago and it was really good to hold on to all of those eight seats and then make three gains as well to make us the largest party on the council That was really really good making twenty six of us now there’s only twenty two Conservatives

Yeah so we are we are running the council again second year running and that is very very good news. Lots of people on the doorstep over the last four months since Christmas had been telling us that they thought we were doing a very good job. More and more people were saying to me, what we need now is for you to be the MP. So that really helped make my decision okay to split the two roles that I had been doing.

We have balanced the council books which were in deficit when we took them over from the Conservatives. We did this by not recruiting people or delaying recruitment, Getting better deals with our suppliers and getting the best deals out of our contracts.

NM: What needs to be done to become an MP

I need to convince people to vote for me when the general election comes to make sure that I am known by all of the residents . They need to know what the Liberal Democrats will stand for. They need to be certain that if they are voting for me that they have a full time MP. Somebody who is not going to be doing two or three other jobs which will take up 2or 3 days of the week. I will be there for the residents of Wokingham all the time. What’s the relationship between the local MP and the Wokingham Borough council how does the relationship work?

CJ: When it works well it’s a very close relationship and I have worked very well with Stephen Conway for last eighteen months, as me as the leader and him as the deputy leader, I can only see that continuing

NM: So what’s going on nationally must reflect locally, you must agree with that. Do you think that that’s giving you where you are today with extra seats and popularity?

CJ: Well we have had three very successful by elections, we have overturned huge Conservative majorities much bigger than the conservative majority that there is in Wokingham at the moment, its only 7383 which is not a lot really. We have done well with those three by election victories.

There was some local issues and in all three of them that helped us to win, but the big thing when knocking on doors people saying I am not voting for the Conservatives again, because of the way that they have performed since 2019.

They haven’t being straightforward with the electorate.

Boris Johnson was a prime minister who had a very casual relationship with the truth. Lots of other conservatives have followed on that. Liz Truss was an absolute disaster. Forty-nine days in office and then she’s thrown out by here own party

Rishi Sunak people think he is definitely better than Liz Truss trust and marginally better than Boris Johnson. I don’t this he is going to make a significant difference.

NM: And so general election predictions are that Labour will win. Do you think that?

CJ: Well that’s what the opinion polls would tell you nationally. But locally very different. If you look at the figures for that you last set of local elections here in Wokingham. Just look at the new parliamentary seat I know the whole seats wasn’t up for re-election. I know that people vote in local elections sometimes different ways the way they vote nationally. But the raw data was 11150 for us and about 6500 for the Conservatives Only 27000 for the Labour party.

So the Labour party are not going to win in Wokingham. Wokingham is a two horse race. It’s between me and John Redwood.

Having been a councillor in Wokingham for 24 years, the now Conservative leader Cllr Pauline Jorgensen has a wealth of experience across a broad spectrum of roles.

And she said the latest local election results was, she thought, ‘very encouraging’. She said: “We were quite close with a couple of seats, and it could have gone either way. We made very positive progress on Earley Town Council which I find encouraging.

“It was certainly better than the national picture and better than what has been happening in Bracknell, Windsor & Maidenhead and West Berkshire.”

Since she took on the role as leader last year, Cllr Jorgensen said certain things have been very frustrating. “There are some things that all the parties agree on but the other parties try to make out that we are not co-operating and that is absolutely not true. It is disingenuous to complain about non-cooperation as we want to work for the benefit of everyone.”

Having lived in Earley since 1984 after moving from Scotland for work, Cllr Jorgensen can regularly be seen on her electric bike which she believes is a fantastic way of getting around the borough, beating the traffic and reducing emissions.

She worked at Heathrow in IT development for 39 years, having originally taken the post for just six months. But she says while her role as Conservative leader takes up most of her time, many residents believe she has a whole office running things behind the scenes which is certainly not true.

She is very active on social media. “I think it is one of the best ways to communicate with people. I get tagged by a lot of people from all over the borough but then it’s a problem trying to cope with the range of issues. I can never remember if they came to me via social media, email, phone call or text. But it is important to be accessible because that’s what we are elected for. People are often surprised to receive a reply from me on a Sunday evening.”

There are lots of issues on people’s minds at the moment with fortnightly rubbish collections high on the agenda.

“People have a right not to be happy about it. I am pretty confident the council is not going to make the savings it is predicting. We fear that this move to a less frequent service is going to cost the council significantly more to begin with than the current weekly waste collection and may also lead to an increase in fly tipping. Wheelie bins are a problem because a lot of the time people don’t have anywhere to put them so they will be left out on the street.

“There is mis-information about the success of bi-weekly collections because they only ever highlight the good performers, never the negatives.”

And she added that the council is playing ‘catch up’ with potholes in the borough and road repairs. “Lots of roads are going to wear out. They need to be fixed properly but they don’t even seem to be spending the money that is there, let alone increasing the budget to account for inflation.”

Members of the public are complaining about the grass verges and their lack of maintenance. But Cllr Jorgensen is all for ‘No Mow May’. “It is absolutely the right thing to do. It encourages diversity in wildlife and the banks of wildflowers by the side of the road are beautiful. But we have got to be sensible. If they are in the way of sight-lines then they must be maintained.”

House building is another issue in the borough, but it is one where the different factions have worked together in a multi-party campaign to help resolve –though Cllr Jorgensen says this united front is not as common as it should be.

“The targets were too high to be sustainable and we have worked hard to get them down. It doesn’t matter how many houses are built; people will always move here because of the work. It would be much better to spread the employment and wealth across the whole country because everyone can’t live in the South-East because it would just become undesirable. It just doesn’t make sense to continue this policy.” And while she agreed that the trend of developing brownfield sites in London and converting unused offices to residential use was a good idea, she added that they need to be of good enough quality for homes and in the right place.

Cllr Jorgensen also praised the town centre redevelopment of which she is proud that the Conservatives had an instrumental role in but said the forthcoming rise in parking changes would be counterproductive. “It really isn’t justified and is simply a false economy. You have to be really careful how often you dip your hands into peoples’ pockets.”

At the Borough Council she has been Vice Chairman of Audit, Conservative Group chairman, Executive Member for Residents Services and a member of the Personnel Board, Executive Member for Housing, and Director of Wokingham Holdings Ltd and Executive Member for Highways and Transport. She has also been Mayor of Earley Town Council and has not ruled out standing for Parliament for a second time.

“I have been in politics since I was 25. It is great meeting lots of interesting people and you do learn a lot. You really never know what will cross your path from day to day.”