The Dispatch has analysed previous election pledges made in 2022 to determine how many have been achieved over the past four years

Enfield Labour's 2022 candidates — Enfield Labour’s 2022 manifesto launch

Later this month local political parties planning to field candidates at this year’s local election in Enfield will be publishing their manifestos – no doubt including a number of lofty promises.

Manifestos are a declaration of intent and a chance to lure voters, but they are not a guarantee of action and pledges can often go unfulfilled, for various reasons.

With that in mind, the pre-election period is the perfect time to look back on the promises made four years ago, and establish how many made by the winning party have been kept – and how many were broken.

The local Labour group’s 2022 election manifesto – titled Enfield Labour On Your Side – was only twelve pages long but packed in 41 pledges across a range of topics including the environment, community safety, education, public health, the local economy and housing.

The Dispatch has looked at every single pledge made in 2022 and concluded that at least 13 have definitely been missed – a failure rate of 32%, or almost one-third.

There remains a lack of clarity over two other pledges which Enfield Labour was invited to provide evidence for – with none forthcoming. It’s also worth noting that at least eight of the promises deemed to have been kept can be described as ‘easy’ or ‘vague’, including a pledge to “continue to issue fines and prosecute those who fly-tip”.

Some of the more notable policies that have been delivered on include the launch of a landlord’s licensing scheme; opening a new recycling and reuse centre; investing £2.5million (later increased to £3.4m) to build a new mental health and wellbeing centre, now under construction; delivering ten new wetlands; and creating five new family hubs and children’s centres offering free services for parents.

As for the promises that have been broken, it’s fair to say that they include many of the more eye-catching policies included in Enfield Labour’s election manifesto.

Firstly, there was the pledge to “plant one million new trees to create a new borough forest, and apply for Enfield to have royal borough status”. It was a lofty goal – which has not even come close to being met.

Enfield Council’s tree-planting programme at its Enfield Chase Woodland Restoration Project is a success story, having won multiple awards and seen around 150,000 trees planted in total, putting the borough at the top of a London-wide league table. However, most of these trees arrived prior to the 2022 election, and the planting programme seems to have stalled somewhat since. It’s also unclear where the land needed for “one million trees” would even come from, since the Labour-run council is intent on allowing housing development across a large swathe of the borough’s Green Belt.

Another broken promise was the vow to “introduce 200 additional mobile CCTV cameras to catch more fly-tippers”. While there has been a boost to surveillance locally, only 16 cameras specifically for catching fly-tippers have been brought in.

Regarding parks, Enfield Labour pledged to “create café and toilet facilities in all our major parks”. Progress on this goal was significantly hampered in 2023 when four existing cafes were shut down over a contract dispute, with one remaining closed ever since. While there are new facilities being developed in some parks, the pledge remains a long way off being met.

Parliament Hill Lido (credit Tom Page via Wikimedia Commons) — Enfield Labour’s promise to create an “outdoor swimming lido” has come to nothing (credit Tom Page via Wikimedia Commons)

Worse still, the pledge to “build an outdoor swimming lido for residents” has gone nowhere. In 2024, when it became apparent there was little money available for a new lido, the council looked instead at introducing areas for wild swimming using existing lakes – but even this idea has now been shelved.

In a statement included in full at the end of this article, Enfield Labour dispute that the promise on an outdoor swimming lido has been broken – by claiming that a privately-run surfing lagoon in Pickett’s Lock (granted approval last year) counts as a lido.

The manifesto also promised to “take back and invest in Fusion-run leisure centres”. Fusion, which had long been struggling financially, was indeed ditched as the council’s leisure provider in late 2023 – but instead of taking back control of the borough’s facilities, a new company was brought in to run them instead. GLL’s management of Enfield’s leisure centres does seem to be going well so far, with significant refurbishments completed, most notably at Edmonton (although the extensive work necessitated a 17-month closure). But this does not count as “taking back” leisure centres.

On community safety, Labour pledged to “create a new Enfield Council law enforcement team of 50 additional officers to help tackle crime and antisocial behaviour”. To date, there are 23 – fewer than half the number promised.

Two manifesto pledges related to council tax, and both have been broken. The first was to “maintain our generous £38m council tax support scheme”. But successive budgets have included cuts to the scheme, most notably in 2024, when a local debt expert warned that the reduction of the maximum discount for working age claimants, from 75% to 50%, would “impose a huge burden on low-income households”. The Dispatch also recently revealed there’d been a 10% rise in the council’s use of bailiffs sent to collect council tax debts in Enfield.

The other Labour pledge was to “keep council tax as low as possible” – but it has risen by the maximum 5% permitted in each of the last four years. The latest tax hike agreed for 2026/27 comes despite Enfield being the biggest beneficiary in London of the government’s Fair Funding Review.

A further two broken promises relate to housebuilding. On this, Enfield Council is certainly not alone in struggling to keep pace, with the huge spike in construction costs since 2022 having a significant impact across the whole country.

The Labour group’s key pledge locally was to “deliver 3,500 affordable homes” but figures for the most recent full financial year (2024/25) show just 89 affordable homes being built across Enfield over twelve months. The previous year was even worse – with 55 completed.

Enfield Council leader Ergin Erbil joined a tree planting event at Meridian Water (credit Enfield Council) — Ergin Erbil pictured last month at Meridian Water, where 1,000 trees have been planted – three times more than the number of completed homes (credit Enfield Council)

For this article, Enfield Labour was invited to comment on its track record. A spokesperson said: “The vast majority of our 2022 promises have been achieved and many others are well advanced.

“We ended Fusion’s contract and brought centres under new management with GLL, alongside millions of pounds of refurbishment.

“Plans are moving forward for the new lido as part of the Surf London development in the Lee Valley.

“We are planting one million trees through the Enfield Chase Restoration Project, London’s largest rewilding scheme.

“We have installed more than 200 new CCTV cameras and over 16 dedicated waste enforcement cameras. Crucially, we recognised that visible enforcement officers are more effective, which is why we now have 73 frontline enforcement officers, new park safety patrols, estate security patrols and more community enforcement officers launching in March. Fly-tipping is down and crime is falling.

“All of this has been achieved despite a decade of crippling underfunding, the economic chaos under previous Tory governments, and Enfield being one of the worst-funded boroughs, ranked seventh-worst funded nationally. All while wealthier areas received more support. We have achieved this in the toughest financial climate in a generation.

“We are proud of our record and look forward to defending it in May.”

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