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Achievements

The Liberal Democrats hold 18 council seats in Kingston and are in coalition in central government. Below are some of our achievements.

Kingston Lib Dems have invested over £50 million to expand a number of existing primary schools and build a 6th form school in North Kingston, opening in 2015.
We have refused to close libraries, as neighbouring Labour and Conservative-run councils have. Instead, we’ve actually invested in longer opening hours and better facilities.
Kingston has recently been shortlisted for £30 million of funding from the Mayor of London to install more cycle-friendly routes.
In partnership with the Metropolitan Police, we have worked hard to make Kingston a safer place to live and work, and it has consistently been rated as the safest in London.
We have maintained grants in the voluntary sector, supporting the community sector and protecting the localism agenda.

In the 2013 Autumn Statement the government announced that it will remove National Insurance Contributions on young people from 2015, providing an incentive for firms to employ more youths. This means that for every young person earning over £16,000, their employer will save around £1,000.
From September this year all 5,500 reception, year 1 and year 2 children in Kingston will receive a free, hot and healthy lunch, saving parents £400 a year.
The threshold for paying income tax has risen to £10,000, meaning 2.7m people now don’t pay any tax and more than 24m people have received a £700 tax cut.
A record number of young people have started apprenticeships, up 86% since 2009/10.
The pupil premium, whereby the most disadvantages pupils are allocated extra money, has risen £900 in this parliament and is still rising.
We passed the same-sex marriage bill while in government. We always were and always will be the party that champions the LGBT movement, even in times of very vocal opposition from religious and political opponents.