On 7th May, those living in Southampton and above 18yrs old will be able to vote in the local elections. I sat down with the Green Party’s Candidate for Portswood, Lori Foster, to ask her questions about housing, public transport, crime, community, and Gaza.
B: Tell me a bit about yourself.
L: I am Lori Foster, I am 43, I’ve been a member of the Green Party for about 5 years, and I’ve lived in St. Deny’s for 6 years. What really made me want to be more active was COVID, when a group of people and I set up the Southampton Coronavirus Mutual Aid Group, which supplied medications for people and groceries to around 800 people a month for a period of one-and-a-half years, and that made me realise just how much need there is in our city.
B: And how does that apply to becoming a councillor?
L: One thing it did was make me realise that the skills I already have in terms of business organisation and listening to what people need, having had many years of listening to clients, were transferable skills. So I realised that I had a lot to give in terms of helping the community and perhaps driving change.
B: More broadly then, why are you running?
L: Just because I love where I live, and I want to make it better. I really believe that, with another Green councillor, we can do a lot more, we can have a lot more favourable outcomes, and work better for people and the planet.
B: You ran in 2024 in Peatree but with only 7% of the vote. I think some people hearing that would think going from one ward where you didn’t do well to another where you could likely win is quite a big step. Why did you make that step from Peatree to Portswood?
L: So, I’d never stood before, and one Green Party thing is that we try to stand a candidate in every ward to give a democratic choice. So, I was asked if I would like to stand, and there was already a candidate for Portswood, so I stood in Peartree to give a democratic chance.
B: Housing is, obviously, a big issue for students. How do you plan to improve housing in Southampton?
L: I don’t know if you’re aware but the council cannot leverage any of their assets to build council housing – they have to rely on the money being put forward to build it or have governmental support. One of the big things that I would like to see is community balance. So currently there are quite a lot of HMOs (Houses of Multiple Occupancy) in small areas within Portswood, and there needs to be more of a balance with that. There is some upcoming private student accommodation which you think would solve the problem, but, having looked at the plans and spoken to the developers, I am slightly concerned that the students are going to be ripped off. They are very small rooms. A lot of them within the build-up, because they’ve got six-stories, five-stories, and four-stories in the Portswood Broadway building, actually have no natural light. So, my major concern is that new buildings passed for students should be fit for purpose, and that is absolutely something we absolutely can do something about once we are on the planning committee.
In terms of available housing, the university has just announced they are building a large amount of housing for students on Stoneham Way, which should really help with decent housing. Obviously, because it’s being built by the university, we support that because it is going to be a lot more affordable.
The overall goal, if I am honest, is governmental change. We need to be in a position where we can build more council housing and more housing for people. At the moment, there is an eight-to-ten-year waiting list, in fact, twelve years for four-bed-plus, and that is not sustainable. So there needs to be house building in a sensible way that isn’t just about profit but about people.
B: If it’s a governmental issue, the next general election in in 2029, as a councillor you won’t be able to deal with that. So, if lots of the issues in housing are because of government, how will voting for you necessarily improve that?
L: As I said, being able to sit on the planning committee means that we can stop silly developments happening, ensuring the developments are sustainable and fit for purpose. That’s something that we can do here and now. Also, in terms of making sure there is balance within communities, that is absolutely something that can be done. One of the things that Kat Barbour, the Green Councillor for Portswood, and I are already working on is moving forward on a Portswood Plan. This is a strategic plan throughout the city, where certain districts are set up, so that money from the council can be directly funnelled into the district, so that the district can do exactly what it needs. I think that’s really essential for Portswood; currently, there is no specific plan, and so it’s just running on what the city needs, whereas Portswood has its own specific needs.
B: You were involved in trying to stop the halls on the Avenue Campus from being built. I expect a lot of students will feel like those halls could have been valuable in reducing costs for halls in the first year, especially with it being right on campus, making going to lectures much easier. So why were you against it?
L: There were a number of reasons. Firstly, we had an awful lot of complaints from residents who were already living there about the proximity to their own properties. They’ve already experienced a lot of anti-social behaviour from people sitting on the benches in the car park, all hours of the night, with partying going on. They were very concerned that that was going to intensify when the properties were built. So, we had a meeting with the consultation committee of the project and explained what the residents’ issues were, and encouraged the university to look very carefully at what the residents were saying, and also very carefully at what the students were saying as well.
A lot of the feedback from the students was basically that they wanted decent housing at a good cost close to the university, but there’s quite a lot already being built currently. Although the Portswood Broadway isn’t ideal, there are also 200 properties being built on the former Wagner site and on South Stoneham Way, so we felt that, in terms of the balance within the community, that space would better be served over at Stoneham than Avenue.
Also, to build those properties, they were looking at taking out a large number of aged ash trees, and we had our own arboreal survey done by someone within the council, and they said there was no ash die-back and there was no need for them to be removed. So, our fear was also a loss of biodiversity, especially in a built-up area like Portswood.
B: It’s my understanding that, instead of replacing the car park on Avenue with housing, it was the Greens that want to replace it with a green area, but what would that actually mean, and how would that benefit people in the area?
L: So, currently, there is a huge loss of biodiversity across the city. In terms of benefitting, we all need bees. Without bees – without insects – our climate is collapsing. The thing with concrete is that it increases the temperature, so having that green space actually makes it more comfortable for people. Also, the people in the lecture theatres will notice a difference because it will make sure it is a lot cooler in the area. Obviously, it is up to the university what they do with the space. We would like some kind of biodiversity increase, whether that’s shortening the car park or investing in the green areas that are already there, that would be our ideal. Obviously, being pragmatic, it has to be up to the university what they want to do with it, but we would absolutely support an increase in biodiversity there. Also, having been to the Avenue Campus myself, it is absolutely gorgeous to sit outside in that green area. It is so nice and it would be a terrible shame, for the students as well, if that was lost.
B: Going back to being on a planning committee, potentially with more Greens, there’s a £75m gap between improving the cost of the council’s stock of housing, and the funding available. One of the council’s plans for reducing that gap is selling off some of the houses which are too expensive for them to sell off themselves.
L: I think that’s utterly ridiculous. They’ve tried to do that before with the right to buy, removing properties that they couldn’t afford to upkeep, and look what happened there – they didn’t reinvest that money into buying housing. The same will happen with this plan. Dave Shields (the Chair of the Housing Scrutiny Panel) has already said that their plan would be to put it into the general housing pot, meaning they won’t be replacing those houses by buying new council housing; they’ll just be using it to continue looking after the council housing they already have. That is incredibly short-sighted. They do have assets that they could leverage in terms of building, because there are a lot of brownfield areas within Southampton that aren’t being used, i.e., car parks. So, there’s lots of space that can be used, even if they don’t use half of that, they can sell half of it and use the other half. I think it’s very shortsighted to be selling off the only assets that we have.
What also concerns me about that housing plan is that it identifies an awful lot of secondary properties that they may look to sell, including some of the flats that they don’t believe are in as much demand. I think they might get into a very scary situation where we are selling all of the housing without leveraging all of the assets to plug that gap. But unless it comes from the government, there’s only so many assets we can sell to plug the gap. Southampton people are going to be in a situation where the council has no more assets and no more housing, which is not sustainable.
B: The central issue, though, is that a lot of the problems you are citing are from the central government. The government is very hesitant to give councils more funding because of its own financial shortages. So, if the central government is the biggest barrier to improving housing in Southampton, how would the Greens notably improve it?
L: So as I said, it is about looking at assets in a different way. Rather than selling them off completely, looking at how we can use them for leverage. To give you an example, in a previous life, I worked for a property developer, and I was involved in a project in a town in Ashford in Kent, where I was part of a consortium called the Chrysalis consortium, and that was a combination of the local council, private home builders, charities, and social services. And they all got together and looked at an area of brownfield sites by the Channel Tunnel, so that area of Ashford had council housing that had been there for years, and a lot of it was falling apart. So, they got together and worked as a team, and they looked at this area and had it valued, and they sold part of it to the housing developer, but as part of this consortium, and what this meant was that the housing developer owned a certain percentage of that and paid for that. Payment for that percentage meant that the council could leverage that money and use it to build housing on the rest of the brownfield site, which meant that it had an increase in council housing and an increase in housing to buy. So, it kind of solved two problems. What they also did with that is they worked together and built a community centre, extra schools, and green areas.
B: Moving on, there’s quite a high rate of violence in Portswood. It’s the highest crime in the area. How would you tackle violence in Portswood?
L: So, I don’t know if you know already, but there’s this great group called PACT – that’s the police team that works together with the community. Obviously, as councillors, we don’t hold the budget for the police; that’s something that they look after themselves. But as a councillor, I would make sure I’m very involved with that and that I’m working with the police and having updates on what’s going on.
In terms of safety, I think another big thing is street lights. Obviously, as you know, they’re being turned off, and I would campaign for them to be turned back on for certain periods of time. I also believe that a lot of it is community based. So, I think the more we can bring our community together, the better, because if we don’t look out for one another, who will?
Also, there’s a huge issue of homelessness in Portswood, which feeds into a lot of the drug addiction issues that are going on, and therefore the violence. If you have a look at the figures, most of them are for petty crime or for violence in terms of that situation. I think there should be more, in terms of integrated community support. So, currently, for example, the Day Lewis pharmacy on its own gives out a lot of methadone to people, which means it’s a hub for people to come to, but there’s no support at that hub. What I would like to see is agencies working together to provide safer hubs for people to go to, so people have somewhere to be throughout the day and throughout the evening. There’s already a great café set up, actually in St. Mary’s, where they’re open from 4 pm-8 pm for people to go to and spend time where they’re safe, and I think something like that in Portswood would be incredible.
B: How would you build community in Portswood?
L: I spoke to the VCJ about having a community group which involves the university and the Highfield Residents Association, and some of the St Deny’s team, where we can get together and have community days. So, whether that’s community barbecues before all the students go back, whether that’s litter-picking, whether that’s just a meet down the pub, just to bring people together and bring them into the same space. We’re all neighbours, and I think that’s really important, which, perhaps, has been lost over the years and is super simple to bring back. We’re very lucky that we’ve got October Books – they do Veg Out on a Monday, which is a community café, and we already have that community spirit; it’s about bringing more people into that.
B: It may be a struggle getting students and residents together. Maybe students would feel uncomfortable due to age gaps and social differences, alongside not knowing many residents on top of that. How would you try and break that divide?
L: One of the things I am involved in is the St. Deny’s Carnival, and we had students, residents, people all over Southampton, to be a part of that. And that’s a whole day where there are events in the parks and the pubs, and people just mixed because it was fun, and it was a specific event, and it was all local music. It’s always difficult in terms of generational divides, but I think we can make it less scary if we begin to hold events together. The university has some great spaces, so we can bring local artists into those spaces, the local residents will come, and the students will come, and they can all spend time together.
Already, many students spend time with residents. They’re chatting to them – they’re neighbours. When I was canvassing near Highfield Campus, there was one student house I spoke to, and I asked, “How do you find living in the community?” and they said it was brilliant – the neighbours tell me when the bins are, the lady next door brings me cake – and that’s the kind of community we want to carry on. We’re not so different. I went to university twenty years ago; however, I still remember what it was like to land in a new city and feel a bit unsure, and I think that’s a really big role residents can play in welcoming students. We want students to stay here, at the end of the day. When they finish their degrees, the universities bring such talent into the city. We want young people to stay and to make Southampton their home, and we can do that by making it more welcoming.
B: The Carnival was the first time it was back–since 1999. It must have been a challenge bringing it back. How successful did you think it went?
L: I would say it went pretty damn successful! We had about 500 people come and had attention from local news, such as ITV, radio, and the paper. The biggest success was bringing all different types of people together and having fun. It was really good for the local economy as well – lots of people spent money in the local pubs and shops. It just worked really well, and it was a day full of joy, and there are so few pots of joy in our lives, so it’s really a precious thing.
B: How would you try to improve public transport in Southampton?
L: Something about me, personally, is that the company that I work for deals with a lot of the transport companies, specifically Stage Coach, and I’m a member of Women in Bus and Coach, so transport is really something within my heart and blood.
One of the interesting things is that there are government grants for the transport sector. Currently, because Blue Star is contracted to the council, the council takes these grants and funnels money out into the bus service, at intervals. I think there should be more of an integrated approach in terms of applying for specific city grants, taking the fuel subsidies that come as well, and looking at expanding routes throughout the city. At the moment, they have what is called a ‘wheel and spoke’ approach, which means that the centre of the wheel is the centre of Southampton, and the spokes go off into different areas of the city. What this means is that you can’t travel from one side of the city to another without going into the city centre. The ideal would be to have a complete east-to-west and west-to-east service, so that people wouldn’t have to keep travelling in and out. Now, there needs to be test cases for that, because it costs £150,000/day to run the route within Southampton. So, you have to have at least 2000 people a day using the service.
We need to encourage people to use public transport more, and that’s only going to happen if that public transport is there. It’s a bit of a catch-twenty-two situation, but there are a lot of things that can be done in terms of looking at government and transport grants, i.e., working with the operators – Southern Ventures are great, actually, at working with councils.
I’ve also got some experience working with Nottingham, which has taken their transport into public ownership and run that, and that’s obviously an avenue in the future that might be interesting to look at. But there is a lot more that can be done.
B: Could you outline the issues you have with the interval funding system for the buses?
L: It’s more so that I believe that our bus system needs to be more sustainable. When the bus companies are planning their routes, there has to be a business case for it. Gone are the days when all of the bus services are civic, unfortunately. So, it needs to be worked directly with the council, rather than what happens now, where the council says “we need a bus route from here to here,” but then the bus company goes “well, we’ve got no business case for it. So you have to prove to us that it’s gonna work.” There needs to be planning at a higher level than that, in terms of looking at the bus companies and saying “the wheel and spoke works for some places, but it doesn’t for others. What can we do in terms of extending the system?” Not necessarily planning in terms of making new routes, but in terms of extending existing routes, or looking at the ability to fund new routes, perhaps with other grants, or looking at the frequency of bus services. I know that’s something that the bus companies are very keen on doing and are very focused on making sure their services are efficient. We’re very lucky in terms of the bus company that we have, but there is some refinement that can be done in terms of working closer with the council.
B: The logic, though, is that where there is demand for a bus, there will be a bus because the market demands it.
L: It is currently. However, they have to have a certain amount of people say that they will use the bus and commit to it to put a new route on. So, for example, on Westwood Road, there is no bus service currently that runs through there, but there is a big demand. There are an awful lot of flats and elderly people who live down that road and rely on the buses. So, the bus company will be looking at the need and be saying, “actually there are a lot of people. No, there haven’t been a lot of buses down there, and the need is only going to grow due to an aging population.” So, that should already be looked at. It shouldn’t be down to the residents to say they need that because if you look at a higher level, you can predict areas of the city and where the movement flows from.
B: Moving towards more international issues, how would you like to see the council divest from Israel?
L: This is a really tough question because I believe there should be total divestment. The council is not in charge of its own pension schemes [referencing the accusation from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign that the Hampshire Pension Fund has invested £36m in companies which are complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza]. In an ideal world, I would totally divest, including the pensions. The pensions are held by Hampshire County Council, which is then held in a larger fund, and then there are areas throughout the country that they’re grouped into. So, when this question was asked of the cabinet, they said that they would speak to the holders of the pensions and ask them to divest. In my mind, that’s not enough, and that’s not acceptable. We should not be putting money into genocide. Personally, the best I can do is not accept the council pension until it is sorted. What I am interested in, however, are the new unitary authorities that are being brought forward and how they will change the way pensions are invested.
B: There’s also Leonardo’s in Southampton, which is supplying weapons to Israel. How would the council be able to have any say in that?
L: As far as I am aware, they own the land that the factory is on, so there’s not a lot the council can do, other than put pressure on the Home Secretary, especially by the leader of the council. I am already doing everything I can by attending the protests outside Leonardo’s. How anyone can stand what Israel is doing currently is beyond me.
B: What are your general feelings towards the new unitary authorities?
L: It’s really interesting – it’s an unknown quantity. They’ve done a similar thing within Manchester, and it’s worked really well. I will wait and watch with interest to see how it works here. We know now that they’ve chosen: Option 1A, which includes the waterside area. I think the one benefit of that is that we can fight as a team to keep that area safe. Currently, the Association of British Ports wants to build more storage along that side, and that’s really dangerous as it’s a haven for birds, and so it would allow more of us councillors to stop that from happening and to protect vital resources. I know that Southampton is often seen as a city that has no regard for the New Forest area, but honestly, I believe that, as the Green Party, we have people and the planet first.
B: I think a glaring issue is the plan bringing very different areas together, such as Southampton, a very urban area, with the Waterfront, a very rural area. That’s quite a confusing mix. Do you think that’s a significant issue?
L: As I said, I think one of the benefits it does allow is safety for environmental issues. Every area should have its own needs and its own requirements, and it’s down to its councillors to work best for their areas. The advantage of the unitary authority is that there is more control over money from the central government, which should mean that areas that have been overlooked should have their needs met. Obviously, this will be down to a number of things, including what the composition of the council will look like.
Certainly, in terms of Eastleigh, Eastleigh has been left along for far too long, and there are some incredible businesses in Eastleigh, both independent and large-scale, and I think that Eastleigh and Southampton together could be a force for great things, and the idea is that, as areas prosper, it can spread out throughout the authority, and then everybody can be brought up together.
B: As a concluding question, why should people vote for you?
L: I would honestly say it’s because I am your neighbour. I live here. I care about what happens in this ward. It’s more than about getting a seat on the council and having the word ‘Councillor’ before my name – that doesn’t matter to me. What matters to me is making change, and doing good within Portswood, and bringing people together, and protecting people as well. People know where I live – if I’ve done something wrong, they know where to find me.
If you would like to ask Lori Foster further questions, you can contact her through her email: loriisgreen@gmail.com
You can read my interview of the Labour candidate for Portswood on the Wessex Scene.
The Liberal Democrat candidate declined an interview due to questions about Gaza.
