Voters In New Build England Say Conservative Promises Have Been Broken

Modern housing developments in Nottinghamshire promised residents a better life, but now they feel some of those promises have been broken. And while many of these voters are ready for “change”, they remain unsure of who they can trust to deliver it.

Leaving the red brick terraced streets of Nottingham and driving north-east out of the city, you are met with miles of private housing development sites scattered across the hilltops. These new neighbourhoods appear clean and pleasant, with Mercedes Benz and BMW cars lining the driveways of spacious detached houses. But when you speak to people who live there, it is clear there is discontent bubbling under the surface.

“People are reasonably well off here. There's not that much poverty… The bit that I live in is all four and five bedroom houses and everyone's working,” Aisa, a 42-year-old social worker, told PoliticsHome. She and her family have recently moved to one of the new developments on the outskirts of Nottingham in Gedling, overlooking the countryside.

“But the cost of living is just incredible. We can't afford to go on a foreign holiday. The cost of food is going up all the time, we’re constantly thinking about how we're going to pay for things if the car goes wrong, or the boiler goes…”

Having moved out of the inner city, Aisa hoped moving here would mean access to better schools for her children. “But there is a problem with teacher retention everywhere,” she said.

“Every family, even if you are working, has got this in mind at the moment. We've had the Conservative government for so long, and they're not doing anything for working families. There's got to be a change.”

The Gedling constituency, which straddles urban and rural areas, voted for Tony Blair's Labour in