Andy Munns
Public Transport, Housing and looking after our rivers are three of the top local priorities for Salisbury’s Green Party candidate, Barney Norris.
Salisbury-born Norris is standing for the party on social and environmental grounds and supports the party’s push for significant changes that he believes would improve people’s lives both locally and nationally.
When asked what he believes the three local priorities would be, he responded by saying, “The three priorities for me are simple responses to living here, simple responses to using the city and bumping up against issues that affect me. And so, if I were to be elected as the MP for this city, I think the first three things I’d focus on would be transport. I think we have a public transport system here locally that isn’t quite fit for purpose, that isn’t allowing people in the villages and rural communities outside the city to use the cities as they should.
“I think we also have a public transport system that really disrupts our city centre, and we need to think about how we can get more public transport, serving more communities in this area whilst disrupting the city centre less, so that’s important to me, particularly because my second priority would be housing. And I think we’re in a really interesting, complex place for housing.
“We’re on a floodplain; we’re in a conservation area. Yeah, there’s a lot that’s tricky and I think a lot of the solutions that are being generated at the moment, I don’t think they’re quite fit for purpose. I think I see new estates being built that don’t have social provision, that don’t have a shop built into them and that don’t have any public transport links into city centres.
“As a Harnham boy, I look at that new build work going on in Harnham on the floodplain and I think a not quite sure that we’ve nailed this yet. So I’d really want to prioritize reviewing new build housing, social housing in the city. Obviously for renters and for buyers, I’d say it’s tricky. I’ve got mates trying to get onto the ladder now, I’ve got mates trying to rent, and this is an expensive place and actually quite a low-wage economy.
“It’s a real trap, particularly, I would say, for younger people, the provisions at the moment that are getting put in for young people just don’t quite strike me as being quite up to standard. There’s some provision in the Fisherton Street Regeneration project, but it’s it’s about £800,000 to do up some flats and that’s not going to cut it.
“So I think transport and housing would be really important.
“Then I’m going to say the one that probably everybody else says, which is we are a city defined by our rivers and we are in an outrageous situation that has been allowed to happen. And there are these people who say it’s sewage that’s clogging our rivers, and it’s not it’s legislation.
“It’s legislation that’s allowed it to happen and it needs to be changed and fixed and stopped urgently. And there’s a big, complex, difficult conversation to have about our water and our sewage and how we process that. But this is not the answer. So that would be very important to me.
“90% of the world’s chalk streams are in England, and about half of them we could walk to within a day from this city. Right now, we live in a unique area and you know, there’s work going on right now. UNESCO’s designating big parts of Boggy Scotland as World Heritage sites. I think the long-term journey for chalk landscapes should absolutely be that this is this is an incredibly precious and important natural resource.
“We should absolutely celebrate it in the way that we celebrate Stonehenge and the cathedral. These are these are precious things that we are so fortunate to live amongst.”
Listen to the full interview where he is asked about multiple points in the Green Party Manifesto here:
Over the next week and a half, Salisbury Radio will conduct and release interviews with the candidates standing in the Salisbury constituency. Hear what they had to say about important local and national issues in the lead-up to the General Election. All seven candidates have been invited to participate.
Tune into Salisbury Radio’s Election Night Special with all the news from 10 pm on Thursday 4th July.
