“A YIMBY doesn’t mean you’re ruining the local environment”

What Steven asked Cllr Louwella Prenter, Medway Council Portfolio Holder for Housing and Homelessness.

Councillor Louwella Prenter is the Labour ward councillor for Gillingham South and the Portfolio Holder for Housing and Homelessness at Medway Council. Steven met her in Costa on Gillingham High Street ahead of her sewing lesson at Unravel and Unwind. They discussed whether the Love Gillingham campaign has improved Gillingham High Street, what brought her father to the UK from Fiji, and her views on being a YIMBY…

Cllr Louwella Prenter.

Which ward are you the councillor for?
Gillingham South

Why that ward?
Because this is where I grew up and I went to primary school, secondary school, lived in this ward most of my life, apart from a short stint where I moved to London to work. And I really care about the ward, so it fits me.

Have you been involved in the Love Gillingham campaign?
I have, yeah. I’m on the task force for the High Street, and I’m also on the Love Gillingham… It’s called the Gillingham Community Panel now, but it started off as the panel where they recruited. They had a panel of 40 volunteers, they got selected, and they had workshops and now that has scaled down into a working panel which I’m part of.

Can you identify any way that Gillingham High Street has improved in that time?
Well, you would have seen some of the street furniture has been cleaned up, repainted. That was a visual. Some lampposts have been repaired where vehicles were driving on the High Street illegally and smashed into them. We’ve now got cameras that enforce this section of the High Street because so many vehicles, delivery drivers, have been driving along here thinking it’s absolutely okay to drive a great big van, whilst somebody is walking along with a pram. It’s not okay, it’s a pedestrianised High Street. It has been for almost all of my life. But they were still doing it. The cameras coming in now has enforced that. I’ve noticed an improvement with fewer delivery drivers. I haven’t had to stop people, which I have been known to do, and ask why they’re doing it. Particularly in this half, because there’s rear access to every one of these properties, and they don’t need to deliver from the front. There’s a couple of things I can think of.
We’re really focused on cleaning it up because that came through the panel, and as a resident, I could tell it is flytipping, litter, it’s people just dumping. It used to be that there would be cardboard from deliveries from certain shops just being dumped every week. That doesn’t happen anymore, because the panel, the community, the Love Gillingham group collectively got together, and planted a couple of flowers in there during our Love Gillingham big day out and the Unravel & Unwind shop keep an eye on it, maintain it and that stops people from putting rubbish on there. There’s lots of little things, there’s more to come. The [Christmas] tree and the lights are funded by the ward councillors across Gillingham and Watling.

When people think of Chatham or Rochester High Streets, good or bad, they have an idea of what the identity of that high street is or was. Does the same exist for Gillingham High Street?
Sadly, the decline in the high street has been… It hasn’t been rapid, it’s been slowly declining for 30 years. If I look back as a kid coming along here, we had lots of big shops. That is not Gillingham alone, all across the country the shops are closing, people are going online shopping, the footfalls are not there. In terms of where it was a real thriving high street for shoppers, it has changed, but we do have the markets. That brings people into the high street. Unfortunately, it has got the reputation, which we are with our Love Gillingham panel trying to change, of being tired and dirty, but that comes from years of decline, from the Tories never investing here.

What is your official occupation?
Well, I’m a councillor now, but in the past, my history is banking and financial services, and for the past ten years, I had been working as a financial administrator in a school, but I am now just a councillor.

Do you have any additional roles, paid or unpaid?
I have quite an involvement in my constituency Labour Party, but obviously that’s not paid. Everything related to the councillor is what I’m doing.

What political parties have you been a member of?
The Labour Party and, in recent years, the Co-operative Party because I’m a Labour and Co-operative councillor.

What time did you join the Labour Party?
I joined the Labour Party in 2002.

That was a very challenging time for the Labour Party.
It was.

Was there a particular moment that made you join at that point?
I think it was the need for community and relocating back to Gillingham, and I could see the changes in Gillingham. I wanted to do something, and Labour seemed a way forward for me to get involved in volunteering and things like that. I wasn’t supportive of the invasion of Iraq.

Who has been the best leader of the Labour Party during your membership?
Gordon Brown.

When did your name first appear on a ballot?
I think it was the 2015 local elections, a ward in Parkwood. I’m not sure of the exact name of it, because they had more boundary changes.

Would that have been as a paper candidate?
Yes, essentially, but obviously if I’d have been elected, I would have done it, of course. It wasn’t a target seat for the Labour Party.

Did you stand again in 2019?
I did, and that was in Hempstead.

What changed in 2023 when you stood in a Labour target seat?
Well, Clive Johnson decided he was going to retire as a councillor after serving for two terms, and this was perfect. This was what I wanted.

When Naushabah Khan became an MP and stood down as a member of the council cabinet, why were you the best person to become the new Portfolio Holder for Housing and Homelessness?
That would be a question for the leader. I think because I was in a ward that has quite a high level of private rented accommodation. We also have the social housing owned by the council, housing providers. I’ve been doing casework relating to that already. My banking background gives me analytical skills. It’s quite data-driven with lots of information. Obviously, I’ve rented accommodation in the past, I’ve lived in a house here, I’ve lived in a flat, just a human element of it. I think all those things together.