Martin Horwood is the current mayor of Cheltenham. He is the Liberal Democrat county councillor for Leckhampton & Warden Hill in Cheltenham, the borough councillor for Leckhampton and the parish councillor for Leckhampton Undercliff. He is also a former MP for Cheltenham and former MEP for the South West of England & Gibraltar.
Martin was born and brought up in Cheltenham and was the town’s MP from 2005 to 2015. In 2017 he stood down as the Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for personal reasons and was succeeded by Max Wilkinson who was successfully elected as the town’s newest MP in 2024.
As MP between 2005 and 2015, Martin led the campaign that saved Cheltenham’s maternity unit and always championed a full-service local A&E department. Martin successfully campaigned for investment in local transport improvements like the Swindon-Kemble line and backed Cheltenham’s Lib Dem council in its record push for recycling – but opposed the Tory county council’s incinerator plan.
In parliament, he campaigned on a wide range of environmental issues and jointly tabled the amendment that raised the UK’s ambition to cut back the CO2 emissions that cause climate change as well as initiating the Lib Dem policy on Local Green Spaces which was later introduced by the coalition government and has since protected over 7000 local green areas important to local communities. He also took up a number of animal welfare and wildlife issues and worked for more social and environmental accountability for UK companies.
In the 2010 parliament, he was the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party’s spokesperson on international affairs, opposed Brexit and championed calls to defend human rights and combat poverty around the world. More recently he chaired an expert party policy working group on Britain’s place in the world which warned of the risks of American isolationism and Russian aggression.
In 2019 he was elected to the European Parliament for the huge South West England & Gibraltar constituency, remaining an MEP until Brexit in January 2020. He was elected Vice-President of the 108-strong Renew Europe group of Liberal and allied parties in the Parliament.
He sat on the DEVE international development committee and was a substitute member of the AFET foreign affairs committee and the SEDE security and defence committee, as well as being vice-chair of the Parliament’s delegation to Iran.
In 2018 Martin was elected to Cheltenham Borough Council to represent Leckhampton ward and re-elected in 2022 and 2024. As a borough cabinet member between 2022 and 2025 he took responsibility first for planning and then for culture, wellbeing and economic development. Martin delivered the town’s tough supplementary planning guidance on climate-friendly new building and a townwide air quality action plan – both initiated by his successor as MP Max Wilkinson when he was a Cheltenham councillor.
In 2018 he was also co-opted onto Leckhampton with Warden Hill Parish Council, was re-elected in 2022 and then again in 2026 as parish councillor for the newly created Leckhampton Undercliff ward – which has only 150 electors! As a parish councillor he championed Cheltenham’s first Neighbourhood Plan which was approved in a parish referendum in 2026 and now has to guide local planning decisions and also generates more money from developers for local community projects.
In 2025 he was elected as a Gloucestershire County Councillor and served for one year as cabinet lead for nature, climate and waste reduction before standing down to serve as Mayor of Cheltenham. During that time he launched the county’s first Local Nature Recovery Strategy and took bold steps to reduce carbon emissions not only from the council itself but also the 73% of its carbon footprint generated by contractors and suppliers.
Professionally, he has worked for Oxfam in the UK and in India, as Director of Fundraising for the Alzheimer’s Society, for a local marketing agency advising national charity clients on fundraising and marketing and Bristol-based international development organisation Development Initiatives.
Martin’s wife Shona is a doctor working for the UK Health Security Agency. They live in Leckhampton and their children Maya and Sam both went to school locally.
Martin also served as a trustee of the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust and a patron of both homeless charity Cheltenham Open Door and Gloucestershire Action for Refugees & Asylum Seekers. He also represents Cheltenham Borough Council on the board of the Cotswold National Landscape. And he recently led the campaign to save another local green space Daisybank and now serves on the board of the non-profit community interest company that owns the land for the community.