Gosport Conservatives appoint new leader who promises to hold "poorly run" council to account
and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565
Peel Common ward councillor Stephen Philpott was elected to take up the role as leader at the Conservative Party AGM on July 15 after Lee East’s ward councillor Graham Burgess stepped down.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdCllr Philpott said: “It is a huge responsibility being party leader and I have enough experience to do it as I have been a councillor since 1986 for 34 years.”
He added: ”It is quite a challenge and I have some ideas on how to do that. We are going to develop policies and present them to the electorate in 2026.”
Being in opposition there is only one job to be done, he said, which would be “holding the Liberal Democrat-run council to account”. He said that at May’s local elections, the Conservatives won 44 per cent of the vote with Liberal Democrats winning 37 per cent. He believes his party won the vote in terms of public opinion, adding: “I think we did rather well but not well enough and we are still in opposition.”
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad“We believe this council is poorly run, we believe this council wastes its money and we believe it can do an awful lot better at delivering services for its residents. Better value for money and without throwing money down the drain on what we consider to be vanity projects. The Criterion and the bus station which is now known as the People’s Park.”
People’s Park is the old bus station that was given £1.35 million in government money to clean up the site of contamination with a proviso that the land be used for housing while the Conservatives were running the council.
The current Liberal Democrat council took over and decided to keep the site as a park, the money was returned to the government as there was no longer the intention to build housing on the land.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdCllr Philpott said: “It’s been 18 months since the announcement about the park and we haven’t seen any detailed plans about what the park might look like. However, we are aware they are considering options that range between £1.1 million and £7.5 million to develop the site with a variation on the theme of a park, not a residential development.”
He said he will be demanding to see the business plan to scrutinise it in the same way that it’s two years down the line since the Criterion was purchased where there is still no business plan for that either.
The Criterion is a dilapidated building the council bought for £600,000.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdHe said: “There are a lot of things we want to hold this council to account on but that they are not coming clean on.”
The Gosport Conservatives bucked the national trend when other Conservative councillors were losing seats, they won a Liberal Democrat-held seat in Gosport at the local elections.
Cllr Burgess announced last year that he would be stepping down this year as leader. He was first elected to the council in 1998, becoming deputy leader of the Conservatives in 2003. He then became leader of the Conservative group and the council in 2021 before stepping down as leader in July.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdGosport Borough Council is made up of 28 councillors, two across 14 wards. It is run by the Liberal Democrats with 15 councillors and led by Forton ward councillor Peter Chegwyn. There are also 10 Conservative and three Labour councillors.
Comment Guidelines
National World encourages reader discussion on our stories. User feedback, insights and back-and-forth exchanges add a rich layer of context to reporting. Please review our Community Guidelines before commenting.