As well as serving as the ceremonial Mayor of Cheltenham for 2026-27, Martin’s key responsibilities now are as a borough councillor for Leckhampton ward, elected in May 2018, and county councillor for Leckhampton & Warden Hill, elected in 2025. He is also a parish councillor for Leckhampton and has worked particularly on neighbourhood planning including the protection of Leckhampton’s green fields.
As a councillor, Martin has served first on Cheltenham’s local ‘cabinet’ helping to direct council services such as economic development, culture and wellbeing and then on the county equivalent where he took the lead on nature, climate and waste reduction.
He has also been Cheltenham’s representative on the countywide Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee, holding local NHS and county social care decision-makers to account and opposing downgrades at Cheltenham General Hospital. He represents Cheltenham on the board of the Cotswold National Landscape (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) and was an unpaid trustee of the county’s leading nature conservation and recovery charity, the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust. He is a Patron of local homeless charity Cheltenham Open Door and of Gloucestershire Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers and a director of the non-profit Daisybank Community Interest Company which looks after a much-loved local green space for the community and for nature.
From July 2019 until Brexit in January 2020, Martin was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the South West England & Gibraltar constituency. You can read more about the Parliament and Martin’s role as an MEP here.
For ten years until 2015, Martin was Member of Parliament for Cheltenham. The Lib Dem MP for Cheltenham is now Max Wilkinson. You can read more about the UK Parliament and Martin’s role as an MP here.
After leaving Parliament, Martin has remained involved in the Liberal Democrat party nationally, chairing the party’s expert international policy working group which produced the policy Britain at the heart of a changing world (downloadable here) and serving as Honorary President of the Green Liberal Democrats. He has also been elected to sit on the party’s Federal Policy Committee.