Tony Devenish: How can councils appeal to Gen Z?

Cllr Tony Devenish represents Knightsbridge and Belgravia Ward on Westminster City Council. He is a former member of the London Assembly.

I knocked on a front door ahead of the May 7th 2026, Council Elections. A 20-something Gen Z opened the door on a chain lock and shouted:

“I voted for Keir Starmer. I will never EVER bother voting again!“

Then she slammed it shut in my face.

The cost of living is hurting young people, and Starmer is looking increasingly tired and middle-aged.

So Councils and Mayors need to answer this urgent question:

How can we appeal to Gen Z?

How can we serve anyone who is under 30 years of age?

I am now in my 20th year as a Westminster City Councillor and a former London Assembly Member. This demographic isn’t my natural comfort zone.

Opinion polls report that two-thirds of young women are considering voting Green and similar numbers of young men may vote for Reform UK.

I recommend a carrot rather than a stick: offer a 100 per cent rebate on annual council tax for those under-30s who volunteer for community leadership roles. That might mean working a few hours a week as a volunteer in a community-run sports club, a library, a rough sleeper charity or perhaps even becoming a Police Special. With unemployment hitting young people worse than at any time since the 1990s, the more work experience on offer, the better.

And we definitely can afford the loss of council tax income. The Treasury can cap any steep loss in Council tax for Councils with disproportionately large numbers of Gen Z. Participating as community volunteers may save the taxpayer billions of pounds over the medium and long term. An example of joined up budgeting, that the public sector often talks about, but rarely achieves.

Cheaper energy for Gen Z and all of us : Councils must continually pressurise Ed Miliband to honour his manifesto promise to reduce energy bills and ensure that Whitehall passes on the funding to make Gen Z’s (mainly) landlord housing better insulated.

City living: 20 somethings still want to live in our cities. Despite that, at the recent excellent Conservatives Together inaugural graduation, I was concerned to hear that a 2024 Tory parliamentary candidate had moved to Hampshire, even though he worked in Central London. Councils have, with one or two exceptions, an appalling record on building new homes. Labour-run Westminster City Council all but eliminated intermediate housing for young professionals so that they could build more homes for those trapped on welfare. Shamefully, not one single new home has been initiated in the last three years by Westminster Council. So it’s no surprise that supply and demand rental costs continue to crush Gen Z aspiration.

Safe streets : younger people are disproportionately victims of crime. The solution is not the one proposed by Reform UK’s “Vigilante Mum”. The real solution is joined up enforcement between the police and Council local eyes. I-phones enable rapid real time reporting of crime. When the police want to, they are capable of assembling responsive teams to crack down on crime, including masked cyclists snatching phones, watches and handbags. Councils and Mayors must ensure that this is the norm.

On Con Home last year, I outlined how Councils can get young people working. I agree with New Labour’s Alan Milburn that Councils must be at the forefront of the fight to ensure no young person is a NEET (Not In Employment , Education or Training). Successive Governments since Covid: now five years’ ago, have negligently left hundreds of thousands of Gen Z to live their lives as NEETS.

Milburn recently described the existence of NEETS as:

“A moral, social and economic crisis.”

We Conservatives agree.

Councils and Mayors must stop waiting for Government to act. We need to come up with the practical solutions that embrace Gen Z, or else they will turn to the Greens or Reform UK or other radical alternatives.

Finally, a plea to all young people. Please get involved in the May 7th local elections and more widely in our democracy. Our politics is dominated by older generations because they are the ones who always vote. Crime, our Environment , Housing, Jobs and the NHS  are all issues that matter, no matter how young you are.

Don’t let others decide your future.

Postscript : I have completed my three years’ as an elected member of the CCA Councillor Board (London rep). I wanted to thank Con Home, CCHQ, all Conservative Party members , especially our councillors for the honour to serve. Clr John Cope and I hope to see many of you at Harrogate Spring Conference on March 6th-8th.