Conservative candidate vows as to quit after a year as Hackney mayor if he cannot honour manifesto pledges

Conservative candidate for Mayor, Tareke Gregg. Photograph: LDRS

A Hackney mayoral candidate has promised to resign after 12 months if he fails to fulfil the majority of his manifesto pledges.

In an interview with the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) on Thursday 30 April, Conservative mayoral hopeful Tareke Gregg stressed his commitment to cutting council tax and parking permit costs, scrapping Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) and bringing back weekly household rubbish collections, among other policies.

The 32-year-old candidate adds that if he cannot deliver on his key pledges – bar reducing the social housing waiting list – within a year then he would give up the job and trigger a mayoral by-election.

He told the LDRS: “The people of Hackney are my boss. If I can’t deliver what they’ve asked me to deliver, I’m wasting people’s time and money, and that’s just being a thief.

“I’m not a politician, I’m a resident.”

A trained scuba diver and a volunteer for the London Ambulance Service, Gregg told the LDRS it was his experience as a Community First Responder which turned him against traffic controls which now cover 70 per cent of eligible roads in Hackney.

He said emergency volunteers were often called out to respond to life-threatening emergencies such as cardiac arrests and faced with the choice of critical delays or paying expensive fines out of pocket as a result of Hackney’s many LTNs.

“Someone’s life is more important than a bit of revenue,” he said.

Born in Jamaica, Gregg and his mother moved to Hackney when he was a boy, where he attended Grazebrook Primary School in Stoke Newington.

The Conservative candidate praised Hackney’s “community spirit” but lamented that much of this has been lost to gentrification which has “priced people out”.

To tackle this, Gregg says he will push for “50/50” partnerships with developers to fund and build more homes, and demand “ironclad” contracts guaranteeing that 50-60 per cent of new properties built would be social housing.

He added that he would ensure new residential buildings came with renewables like solar panels and wind turbines to help ease the cost of living.

Another core plank of Gregg’s campaign is to boost funding for youth services.

This includes the charity Hackney Play Association, which runs play and youth clubs for children across three playgrounds in the borough.

“It made me who I am,” he said, adding that families could no longer afford the opportunities he had as a youngster during school holidays.

“I remember playing rugby for free, and that’s gone now. Parents are paying like £100 an hour, stupid money,” he said.

To find the money for policies like freezing social rent and cutting council tax, Gregg is planning an immediate audit of the council’s coffers to claw back money from current projects he deems “overfunded”, offering Kings Hall Leisure Centre as an example.

But he promised to take a “realistic” approach to financial management and housing, acknowledging the limits he would have as Mayor to bring in some of his preferred policies, such as rent controls.

“I can try and work with City Hall or Number 10 to the best of my abilities, but they could easily tell me to get lost. I want to work with them to influence them, but I can’t force them.”