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Green Party Local Government Policies 2026

Source: https://www.local.gov.uk/about/campaigns/general-election-hub/green-party-manifesto

Bottom line for Sussex households — Biggest day-to-day differences:

  1. Energy bills & home insulation
  2. Rent levels & housing security
  3. Transport choices (cars vs public and active transport)
  4. Protection of coast and countryside

Taxation

  • Elected Greens will push for a wealth tax. This will tax the wealth of individual taxpayers with assets above £10 million at 1 per cent and assets above £1billion at 2 per cent annually.
  • Elected Greens will push too for the reform Capital Gains Tax (CGT) by aligning the rates paid by taxpayers on income and taxable gains.
  • Elected Greens will also call for the reform of tax rates on investment income, by aligning them with the tax and NIC rates on employment income.
  • We would remove the Upper Earnings Limit that restricts the amount of National Insurance paid by high earners.
  • We would equate the rate of pension tax relief with the basic rate of income tax to help fund the social care that will allow elderly and disabled people on low incomes to live in dignity.

Natural Environment

  • Elected Greens will transform and reconnect us with nature by:
    • Taking the water companies back into public ownership.
    • Set aside 30 per cent of our land and seas by 2030 in which nature will receive the highest priority and protection.
    • Green MPs will champion reintroducing nature into our urban environments, with investment in schemes such as street planting of native trees, compulsory hedgehog holes in all new fencing, swift bricks and bee corridors.
    • Elected Greens also commit to making at least 30 per cent of UK domestic waters into fully protected marine protected areas by 2030. We will seek to ban all destructive fishing practices from Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and other domestic waters.

Climate Change and Energy

  • Communities to own their energy sources, ensuring they can use any profit from selling excess energy to reduce their bills or benefit their communities.
  • Push forward the recommendations from the Climate Change Committee to reduce emissions of polluting fluorinated gases in all manufactured goods.
  • We will also increase the scope of bans on the production of single-use plastics for use in packaging and disposable products such as baby wipes.
  • Green MPs will increase investment into research and development by over £30billion across five years.

Transport

  • Elected Greens would push for local authority control and proper funding for bus services, to increase these in urban areas, and in rural areas ensure that there is a bus service to every village.
  • We will empower local authorities to run bus services themselves if they see fit and provide a service that meets their community’s needs. Cities and sparsely populated rural areas will need different solutions; we need to give them the flexibility and funding.
  • Elected Greens will push for Investment in a modern, efficient, publicly owned railway, with affordable fares.
  • Within a decade we want to see all petrol and diesel vehicles replaced by Electric Vehicles (EVs).

Devolution

  • Greens believe all communities should make their own decisions. Local authorities need to be given the powers and the resources to do the things their communities need them to do.

Local Government Finance

  • Elected Greens will ensure that local authorities across England are given the powers and resources they need. They will push for an increase in local government funding of £5 billion per year to tackle the current under-funding crisis and enable local authorities to play a key role in the transition to a zero-carbon economy and protecting nature.

Children and Young people

  • Make it mandatory for councils to provide free transport for 16–18-year-old pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disability.
  • Push for an additional £3billion to be provided to local authorities to enable them to provide high-quality children’s social care.
  • Push for children in foster care or who have been adopted to have consistent access to a trained counsellor until it is no longer required. We would fund councils to extend staying put arrangements, so fostered young people can choose to stay with foster parents until they are 21.
  • All children to have a daily free school meal, made from nutritious ingredients and based on local and organic or sustainable produce and free breakfast clubs for children to Year 1.
  • Advocate for £1.4billion per year to be invested by local authorities in Sure Start Centres.
  • Advocate for an increase in school funding, with an £8billion investment in schools that would include £2 billion for a pay uplift for teachers.
  • Ensure that every school building is safe for children by investing £2.5 billion a year to tackle the RAAC concrete scandal and provide the funding needed for schools to be well maintained and fit for purpose.
  • Review assessment targets in schools so that arts and vocational subjects are treated equally within the curriculum, children are supported to play and learn outdoors, and every child can learn about the climate and biodiversity crisis to equip them for the challenges ahead.
  • Move academies and free schools into local authority control, removing charitable status from private schools and charging full VAT on fees. Private school places for children with special education needs will not be subject to VAT. This will be an interim measure while public-sector capacity is built.
  • Push for £5 billion to be invested in special needs (SEND) provision within mainstream schools.
  • Fully restore the role of the school nurse, ensuring that all schools have access to an on site medical professional.
  • Give children and students at all state funded schools and colleges access to a qualified counsellor.
  • Push for a £3 billion increase in funding for sixth-form education over the next parliamentary term, and a £12billion investment in skills and lifelong learning for further education.
  • Restore the Education Maintenance Allowance to financially support young people to extend their studies after the age of 16.

Health

  • Restoring local council budgets for public health.
  • Invest £20billion in NHS budgets over the life of the parliament for hospital building and repair.
  • Increase the allocation of funding to primary medical care, with additional annual spending reaching £1.5billion by 2030, targeted at areas of greatest need.
  • Provide a £2billion capital investment in primary care over the next five years.
  • Additional investment in NHS dentistry, reaching £3billion a year by 2030.

Public Health

  • Public health to be a cross-government priority.
  • Restore public health budgets to 2015/16 levels with an immediate increase of £1.5billion. Smoking cessation, drug and alcohol treatment and sexual health services all need to be properly funded.

Mental Health

  • Ensure that tailored and specific provision is readily available for the particular needs of communities of colour, children and adolescents, older people and LGBTIQA+ communities.
  • Push for more accessible and prompt mental health needs assessments for children and adolescents
  • Provide a trained and paid counsellor in every primary and secondary school, and every sixth-form college

Housing and Planning

  • Provide 150,000 new social homes a year and end the so-called ‘right to buy’, so that these homes can belong to communities for ever.
  • Empower local authorities to introduce rent controls.
  • End no-fault evictions.
  • Introduce a Fairer, Greener Homes Guarantee to ensure warm, safe homes that are well insulated
  • Transform the planning system so new developments come with access to public services and green spaces are protected.

Asylum and Migration

  • Elected Greens will campaign for a system of asylum and humanitarian protection that treats the applicant fairly, humanely and without discrimination.
  • Those seeking asylum and protection to be permitted to work while their application is being decided.
  • Green MPs would campaign to abolish the No Recourse to Public Funds condition that exacerbates social, economic, and racial inequalities.
  • We would also campaign to abolish the ten-year route to settlement which unfairly traps people in poverty and hardship.
  • All visa-holding residents should have the right to vote in all elections and referendums.

The Economy

  • Push for significant investment in a green economic transformation, alongside the private sector. This programme will include:
    o An average of £40 billion per year over the course of the next parliament, including £7 billion annually on climate adaptation.
    o A carbon tax to make polluters pay and provide money to invest in the green transition.
    o Bringing privatised utilities back into public hands.
    o Taxing multi-millionaires and billionaires to fund our public services.

Pensions and Safety net

  • Restore the value of disability benefits with an immediate uplift of 5 per cent.
  • End the unfair targeting of carers and disabled people on benefits.

Culture, Media and Sport

  • Invest £5 billion investment in community sports, arts and culture.
  • Support local grassroots sports clubs, music and art venues.
  • Introduce a Digital Bill of Rights that establishes the UK as a leading voice on standards for the rule of law and democracy in digital spaces

Rights and Equality

  • Elected Greens will support the right to religious expression and work with religious communities to defend the safety of places of worship. We will also scrap Prevent.
  • The Green Party supports self-ID, so that trans and non-binary people could be legally recognised in their chosen gender through self-declaration.

Food Security

  • Green MPs would draw on examples of good practice elsewhere and campaign for:
    o Increasing domestic food production and expanding local horticulture.
    o A food partnership in every area, and for a Local Food Enterprise Fund to be set up.

ENDS