Blur drummer and Mid Sussex Labour’s Parliamentary candidate Dave Rowntree reveals priorities: potholes, housing and improving Burgess Hill town centre

Mr Rowntree, who is the drummer with Britpop band Blur, is Labour’s Parliamentary candidate for Mid Sussex.

He has played with Blur since 1988 and became a member of the Labour party in 2002.

He told the Middy: “I’ve been like many people, somebody sitting there shouting at the TV going ‘somebody's got to do something!’”

He continued: “Then it just dawned on me that the person that was supposed to be doing something was probably me.”

Mr Rowntree said part of what he admires about Labour is the social mobility they promote. He said: “People get trapped in all kinds of situations and it’s so hard to break out of that. The fundamental mission of the Labour party really is to help people improve their lot in life. We all have a time in life where we’re able to help other people and we all have times in life where we need help from other people. I’m a member of the Labour party because I’m somebody who’s willing to do the helping, that’s really what it comes down too.”

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Mr Rowntree outlined his key ‘day-one priorities’ if elected.

He said: "First of all I want to fix the potholes. I think it’s a mark of just how decrepit our society has become, the fact that the roads are in such a state, because it’s an entirely fixable problem. It takes political will and it takes money and the fact that we appear to have neither is a marker of just how bad the public services have got in this country. Labour have got a plan to fix a million extra potholes a year over ten years and beyond that we need to stop potholes occurring.”

Mr Rowntree said his second priority is to rebuild Burgess Hill town centre, saying it’s a ‘disgrace’ this has not been done yet for this ‘beautiful community’.

He is a solicitor and believes the lease is too short for founding a shopping centre. He said he would eventually like to ‘thrash out a deal’ between the council team, New River and a developer for improving the town centre.

Mr Rowntree said his third priority would be more homes and infrastructure.

He said: “Tens of thousands of new houses gone up in the past ten years – fantastic. We need new houses but what isn’t going up is the infrastructure to go with these things. We’re not upgrading roads, we’re not building new schools, pharmacies, hospitals. We're not building medical centres, we’re not upgrading the water infrastructure, we’re not upgrading the sewers. All of this stuff needs to be planned along with the new housing.”

He said he believes in building communities and not just new housing, adding that Labour want to ‘rebuild the planning system from the ground up’ to be more community led instead of developer led.

Mr Rowntree, who lives in Fulking and had family in Mid Sussex, said he is glad to be campaigning for the newly re-defined district.

“It's a real privilege,” he said. “The people here are overwhelmingly friendly and the quality of life in Mid Sussex is superb.”