We asked each of the parties to say what they would do for St Albans. Below, executive leader of the council, Cllr Julian Daly, writes for the Conservatives.

Locally we run a council that listens, makes decisions and delivers for the whole community. This involves protecting the vulnerable, delivering for residents, supporting local business and all with a competent cost conscious council.

We believe the Conservative run council has an excellent record of delivering services. Independent polling shows resident satisfaction with the way the council runs services has risen to 71 per cent from 42 per cent when we took over running the council in 2011.

Key achievements over our five years running the council have been:

  • No increase in District Council tax for eight years in a row
  • Three new state of the art leisure centres (at Westminster Lodge, Batchwood and Cotlandswick
  • £2.8 million Heritage Lottery Fund commitment towards the new museum in the old Town Hall in Peter’s Street
  • Increased recycling for lower cost
  • Protected £0.5 million grants to the voluntary sector
  • Built first new council housing in around a quarter of a century
  • Converting derelict garage sites from anti-social behaviour hotspots into affordable housing
  • Invest in and reorganise our car parking leading to increased usage

We continue to target those wards where we had breakthroughs last year – Batchwood, London Colney, Marshalswick North, Park Street and Verulam.

The major issue facing our community is the need for housing to meet our own growing population. We have worked with the other political parties to put forward a consensus in the strategic local plan on how this should be done.

We face a period of declining central government funding which makes it essential that we have a financially competent and efficient local council.

We also want to complete our programme of leisure centre improvement with new facilities in Harpenden and at the Verulamium Park athletics track.

We want to see delivery of the new refuse and recycling contract over the summer and accelerate reaching the recycling rate to over 60 per cent.

National politics undoubtedly impacts on the way people vote. But the public give credit to strong local candidates and well run councils such as ours.