The chair of the local Green Party wants to “restore that sense of pride to the borough”.
Curtis Cooper, chair of Barking and Dagenham Green Party and a candidate standing in Northbury ward, says the main issues for the Greens in the borough are cleaner and safer streets, improved green spaces, and housing.
“We are a very proud borough, we’re very proud of where we live, we’re very proud of our roots, our heritage, whether that be in South Asia, whether that be in the Caribbean, whether that be in Africa, whether that be coming from the borough for generations,” Cooper told the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
“To see the level of littering and fly-tipping on the streets, it’s quite disheartening for people, because everyone wants to live in a neighbourhood which looks clean, which looks nice, which looks cared for.”
On the borough’s many parks, Cooper also feels the council isn’t “taking care of them properly.”
“In all of these green spaces around here, there’s loads of litter, there’s loads of rubbish everywhere,” he said. “We need to invest more in our green spaces because those are the places where our children, where our future, grow up.”
The crime rate in Barking and Dagenham is below the London average, with 94.7 crimes per 1,000 people compared to 100 per 1,000 capital-wide.
But Cooper said that borough residents often tell him they feel unsafe.
“We have those conversations with people, with mothers and people who have children, and they tell us that they don’t feel safe on the streets,” he said.
“They feel that their kids are being roped into increasingly illegal activities because there’s nowhere else for them to go.”
He added that: “I think a lot of it is antisocial behaviour from young people, but I don’t think it’s their fault particularly. I think it’s that sort of stuff which could be directly combated with more community enforcement and better third spaces for our young people.”
The Green Party’s environmental pledges include a crackdown on commercial fly-tipping and more enforcement officers, more regular street cleaning, and free bulky waste collections once a fortnight.
They say they’ll improve street lighting in residential areas, make community policing “more visible” and “push for additional funding for youth support services”.
All of this costs money and comes as the council’s current budget projections envisage having to find £85m of savings over the next five years.
Councils across the country – including Barking and Dagenham – face rising costs and demand for special educational needs, social care and temporary homeless accommodation.
Cooper said a Green-led council would “work with the national government” on these issues, while also seeking external grant funding and bursaries.
He said: “I do think we need to get those grants, sometimes even borrow, to be able to fund things which make people’s lives better. That in turn will mean that more people are in work, fewer people are unreachable.”
Cooper believes the Green Party can pose a real challenge to Labour in the elections on Thursday, 7 May 2026.
Labour currently holds 47 of the 51 council seats. The Green Party is standing for 36 of them.
“We don’t want to be too ambitious,” Cooper said. “We’re an insurgent party; we’re very recently gaining support in areas where we’re campaigning.”
Cooper also thinks the Greens pose an alternative to Reform UK, which is standing a full slate of 51 candidates.
“I think a lot more people than others may expect are going to put their faith in us to deliver for them.”
