The party is standing 38 candidates in this year’s polls, and has four sitting councillors, all defectors from Labour in the last 12 months.
The party launched its manifesto on Friday, 17 April, making its pitch to the voters of Swindon.
It said: “After years of the stale old two-party system, hope is finally here.
“It’s time for real change in Swindon. We’ve been listening to voters on the doorstep.”
In terms of specific policies, rubbish, littering and fly tipping are very prominent.
Policies to improve things include “pot-luck days at the household waste recycling centre in Cheney Manor Industrial Estate, where householders don’t need to book ahead.
Other ideas include car-only days, excluding vans, and an improved bulky waste home collection service for things like furniture.
A Green council will encourage repair cafes and a “too good to waste” scheme to keep useable and saleable items from landfill.
The manifesto promises: “Easier reporting and better enforcement of fly tipping, and greening spaces after cleaning them, to prevent and deter further fly-tipping.”
Social work and social care are major areas of expense for Swindon Borough Council, especially residential places for children and young people.
The Greens’ manifesto says: “Our aims are to explore alternative solutions that prevent children going into foster care in the first place, and to support the ‘mockingbird’ fostering model, to reduce the number of children ending up in residential care.”
It says a Green council will have “A Swindon Homes for Swindon Children approach of local partnerships and in-house solutions to stop sending local children to private residential care outside of Swindon.”
It will bring services such as Homeline in-house , saying that will save on paying expensive private providers”.
Public transport lies at the heart of the party’s plans for getting people around.
The manifesto says a Green-led council will “connect overlooked communities with improved bus links to the surrounding areas of Swindon and the long overdue cycle links, like the missing link from Highworth to Swindon,
“It will work smarter, by making existing infrastructure, such as bus and cycle lanes, legal routes for electric scooters and using existing enforcement powers to keep pavements clear.
“A “Re-cycling” scheme to support people to refurbish bikes taken to the household recycling centre” will be introduced.
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The manifesto adds: “Ultimately, we’d like a bus service owned by the council; run for your benefit, not private profit.
“Until that day, we will work with the bus companies to make bus travel a cleaner, easier, more reliable mode of transport for everyone by creating new routes and protecting the routes that people rely on and opening up the new bus boulevard to other bus and coach companies
“This year, we persuaded the council to agree to look at how we could make bus travel free for young people. We will stand by that commitment.”
On housing, the manifesto says: “We will focus on delivering more social housing, truly affordable homes for local people, built to the highest levels of modern, energy-saving design, built on brownfield sites.”
There are 239 candidates standing in this May’s elections.
As well as 38 Green Party candidates, there are 57 each for Labour, the Conservatives and Reform UK, 25 for the Liberal Democrats and five for the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition.
