Political parties across Lambeth have published their manifesto pledges

With just days to go until the local elections, political parties across Lambeth have published their manifesto pledges which detail how they would rule the council over the next four years.

Across the 25 wards in Lambeth, a total of 309 candidates are hoping to win one of the 63 seats on Lambeth Council.

Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives each have 63 candidates meaning there is a person contesting every seat in the borough. The Green Party has 62 nominees.

Reform UK has 37 candidates, there are nine Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition candidates, while seven independents are also contesting seats. There are three candidates standing for the Socialist Party. One Christian Peoples Alliance candidate and one Social Democratic Party candidate will be running too.

During the 2022 local election in Lambeth, 58 Labour councillors were elected, while the Lib Dems won three seats and the Greens won two.

Since then, the Greens gained two more councillors after winning a by-election in May 2025 and after a suspended Labour councillor went on to join the Greens. Another councillor who was suspended by Labour now sits as an independent while another Labour councillor defected to the Lib Dems in November 2025.

Professor Tony Travers, of the London School of Economics, said it was possible that Labour could lose overall control at the local elections – though he said it was “hard to imagine” them not being the biggest party.

He told the BBC: “Lambeth is currently strongly Labour-held, but with threats from the Liberal Democrats in some parts of the borough, particularly for example Oval, but elsewhere the Greens are likely to win seats from Labour as well.”

According to pollsters More in Common, Lambeth is one of five inner London boroughs where Labour is under threat from the Greens, who are hoping to make significant gains. The other boroughs are Hackney, Newham, Southwark and Islington.

From crime and safety to housing and transport, the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) has compiled a list of each of the manifesto commitments from the main political parties below:

Conservative Party

Crime and safety

• Lead a borough-wide campaign encouraging residents and businesses to report every crime
• Strengthen community safety networks by expanding Neighbourhood Watch, WhatsApp groups, and promoting the use of our neighbourhood policing team’s MetEngage platform
• Push the council to fund additional police officers and police community support officers and prioritise crime hotspots in Lambeth such as Clapham High Street

Housing

• Tackle the repairs backlog with a borough-wide ‘Repair Blitz’
• Reduce the number of houses designated as ‘non-decent’ from 22 per cent to 10 per cent within 2.5 years, and to 5 per cent within 4 years
• Reform Lambeth’s housing service with strict accountability and time limits

Transport and environment

• Reinstate a Cabinet Member for Transport on the council
• Campaign for Streatham to receive funding for long-term transport infrastructure improvements
• Lobby Transport for London (TfL) for three additional Northern Line trains per hour at peak times

Local economy

• Work alongside local Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) to create a Small Business Action Panel to give traders direct influence over council decisions
• Support regeneration of high streets with better transport, cleaner streets, and targeted investment

Schools

• Support high-performing schools that wish to expand
• Work pro-actively with schools who face falling enrolment to minimise disruption to pupils and families
• Work with neighbouring London boroughs to establish a new Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) school

Green spaces

• Organise regular community clean-ups to keep parks well maintained
• Ensure damaged or worn sports equipment is repaired or replaced quickly
• Protect public access to parks by limiting excessive commercial use and ensure any commercial activity in green spaces is proportionate, transparent and benefits the wider community

Labour

Crime and safety

• End rough sleeping in Lambeth by 2030
• Expand drug and alcohol outreach services from five days a week to seven
• Establish new Lambeth Hate Crime Commissioner and new Police Scrutiny Panel
• Continue investing in Lambeth’s Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) service
• Introduce officers to patrol every neighbourhood to help tackle anti-social behaviour (ASB) with full council enforcement powers

Housing

• Build 4,000 social and affordable homes by 2035
• Invest £200million in improving council homes
• Tackle bad landlords and set up a renters’ rights team to help protect tenants from illegal eviction

Transport and environment

• Introduce London’s first family car-sharing permits
• Double the number of cycle hangars, alongside increasing the number of Electric Vehicle (EV) chargers
• Protect bin collections, introduce free community skip days and increase on the spot fly-tipping fines to £1,200
• Introduce a new enforcement van to collect e-bikes

Local economy

• Invest over £30million a year into helping Lambeth residents with the cost of living
• Pay a grant to help young people from lower-income families stay in education post-16
• Scrap complex trader parking permits
• Use new High Street Rental Auction powers to bring long-term empty shops back into use and take on gambling firms through campaigning for stronger legislation

Schools

• Expand mentoring programmes, support teachers and work with schools to make them smartphone-free
• Increase specialist school spaces and family support so more children with SEND can thrive close to home, including a new site at Kings Avenue School
• Roll out free breakfast clubs in every primary school, expand free school meals, and help families with the cost of uniforms and school essentials

Green spaces

• Continue investing in Lambeth’s parks and expand tree planting across the borough

Leisure and culture

• Free gym and swim for under 16s
• Invest in adventure playgrounds, youth clubs and safe community spaces
• Invest in the borough’s libraries and bring more council services into them so residents can access advice, support and digital services in one place

Social care

• Combine youth work, children’s centres, early help and family support into a single joined-up service for all children and young people
• Introduce carer parking permits
• A £200 First Steps grant to help new parents cover the cost of essential items when a child is born

Liberal Democrats

Crime and safety

• Partner with police on active CCTV monitoring in crime hotspots
• Keep police station front counters open
• Bring back lost youth facilities with young people designing what they need

Housing

• Build new social housing and bring empty homes back into use to tackle homelessness
• Pay contractors for finished jobs and not every call-out, with a tenant / leaseholder sign-off process before payment is made

Transport and environment

• Encourage public transport, provide more safe walking and cycling routes and back car sharing
• Expand EV charging, cycle parking and e-bike bays
• Impound abandoned e-bikes at the operators’ cost

Local economy

• End hikes to parking permit fees, with fairer charges for residents, visitors and others

Green spaces

• Plant more trees, repair pavements and clean streets
• Launch regular ‘mega-skip’ rounds, and catch and fine fly-tippers

Social care

• Back home carers and involve people in their own care plans
• Offer elderly and disabled people home safety checks to prevent greater risk and cost later
• Support domestic abuse refuges
• Protect children with early intervention with family support that involves the wider family in children’s plans

Green Party

Crime and safety

• Support a public health approach to drugs and knife crime
• Push for an immediate end in the use of live facial recognition technology by the police
• Investigate and campaign for an end to stop and search policies
• Work with grassroots campaigns to demand justice for those killed in police custody

Housing

• Ballot residents on any estate regeneration scheme
• Pause and review all housing demolitions and remove the current threat to South Lambeth, Cressingham Gardens, Central Hill and Fenwick Estates
• Prioritise building, renovating and maintaining energy-efficient, accessible, high quality council homes
• Work with local education establishments and industry experts to develop an urgent plan to retrofit all homes in Lambeth

Transport and environment

• Lobby for more reliable east-west public transport routes in South London
• Facilitate car-sharing schemes to replace the recently-withdrawn Zipcar service and aim to expand cargo bike schemes
• Make junctions safer for the hard of seeing with audible warnings at traffic lights
• Introduce secure cycle parking at all rail stations
• Introduce school streets around every Lambeth school
• Support better charging facilities for EVs and bikes
• Ensure the council’s own fleet of vehicles become electric
• Retrofit council buildings and community centres with new insulation
• Investigate and support projects to generate renewable energy locally such as London Energy

Local economy

• Work with local supermarkets and businesses to make Lambeth’s high streets the first single-use-plastic-free roads in London, and lobby for an end to the use of unnecessary plastic packaging
• Promote employment opportunities for disabled residents
• Promote small independent businesses and markets and put a greater emphasis on local procurement for Lambeth Council’s services

Schools

• Look at re-introducing grants along the lines of Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) for working-class young people in post-16 education
• Aim to introduce a dedicated youth worker in every school
• Reduce traffic and improve air quality near schools and support teachers and other key works with low-cost parking permits
• Prioritise supporting children with SEND and their parents, ensuring resources are allocated on the basis of need
• Invest in youth work and forest schools

Green spaces

• Prevent privatisation of public green spaces such as parks, prioritising fun, health and leisure over profit
• Plant thousands of trees and protect existing parks and gardens from development
• Offer community groups who manage parks longer leases to make it easier for them to raise funding

Leisure and culture

• Invest in playgrounds, adventure parks and sporting facilities and expand free access to gym and swim
• Review licensing policy, planning and other regulations and aim to bring back our lost venues and pubs, making Lambeth a major centre of London’s leisure and nightlife

Social care

• Expand on Lambeth’s existing offer for care leavers and include free laptop and WiFi access, improved transition-to-childhood grants, automatic GP and dentist registration and safe, stable housing with a minimum three-year tenancy
• Introduce a Care Experience Accountability Panel led by care-experienced adults to scrutinise decisions and shape policy
• Guarantee disabled residents have access to digital technology, online services and support for digital literacy
• Review all social care services with the aim of making them fully accessible and responsive to the diverse needs of disabled people

Reform UK

Reform UK has not published a local manifesto for Lambeth. The LDRS contacted Reform for details of what it would do locally if it won seats, but received no reply.

However nationally the party has pledged to keep council tax low, and to place migrant detention centres in any areas that vote for the Green Party, while keeping them out of Reform-voting areas.

The party also said it wants to make it mandatory for schools to display the Union Flag and a picture of The King.