Mayor of Cheltenham. Lib Dem county councillor for Leckhampton & Warden Hill, borough councillor for Leckhampton & parish councillor for Leckhampton Undercliff. Former Cheltenham MP & former MEP
Thursday 7 May is polling day in Leckhampton and you have TWO votes this time!!
One vote is for one of Leckhampton’s two borough council seats and popular sitting Lib Dem councillor Julia Chandler is the best placed candidate to beat Nigel Farage’s Reform Party here. Julia lives locally and is a hardworking former community midwife for Leckhampton. She has represented Leckhampton alongside me since 2024 and I couldn’t wish for a better teammate on the council.
Leckhampton has traditionally always been a close race between the Conservatives and Lib Dems, with one recent election being decided by just 13 votes! But last May Nigel Farage’s Reform Party overtook the Green Party to come third in Leckhampton & Warden Hill and became the main opposition party to the Lib Dems across Gloucestershire. So the chances are this will be a close contest between the Lib Dems and Reform.
Your second vote is for Leckhampton’s Neighbourhood Plan. Please vote YES! This is the culmination of many years’ work and local consultation by parish councillors and will influence planning decisions taken by the borough council and other planning decision-makers. It adds some protection to more local green spaces, community facilities and local heritage and sets out the preferred cycling and walking routes we want to see improved. And adopting it will even bring a higher rate of developer contribution too so that will mean more money for local projects.
The polls are open from 7am until 10pm and you now must take a Photo ID to vote. The location of your polling station is on the official poll card you’ve received from the council – please check as some Leckhampton polling stations have changed in recent years. Phone us on 01242 224889 if you want to double-check where to vote or need a lift to the polling station. You don’t have to take the poll card to vote but it’s helpful for council officers if you do. If you’ve had a postal vote but haven’t posted it, it’s too late to post but you can seal it in the envelopes according to the instructions but take it to any polling station or the Municipal Offices in the Promenade.
We’re expecting the result on Friday. Good luck Julia!
Martin with Warden Hill Lib Dem borough councillors Tony and Graham
This Thursday 1 May, from 7am to 10pm, the polls are open in the county council election (find your polling station on the polling card you’ve been sent or online here and remember you now need a Photo ID to vote. It’s helpful to take the polling card but this doesn’t count as ID).
Here are three positive reasons I hope you’ll vote for me as your Lib Dem county councillor in Leckhampton & Warden Hill:
I grew up here and I’ve known Leckhampton & Warden Hill all my life. My local shops growing up were in Salisbury Avenue. My favourite walks were through Leckhampton’s green fields. This area has always mattered to me. As your MP and then as a local councillor I have argued successfully for more affordable and climate-friendly housing alongside the protection of our most precious green spaces, I’ve worked hard on local issues from anti-social behaviour to air quality to safer routes to school.
We need better roads and pavements. Most of the complaints I get as a councillor are actually about county council responsibilities like our roads and pavements. 20 years of Conservative administration at Shire Hall has left them in a state that looks terrible, damages cars and is downright dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians. We need change.
I’ll always back nature-friendly solutions. Other parties call themselves green but I’ve actually delivered a clean air plan for Cheltenham, won funding and developer commitments for renewable energy and moved the motion on Cheltenham Borough Council that declared a nature emergency, committing the council to nature recovery, future protection of local green spaces and natural flood risk management such as uphill planting – particularly important to low-lying areas of Warden Hill.
Martin is currently working with local residents to protect Daisy Bank for future generations. The lower field has been put up for sale by its owners
And I’ll always keep in touch all year round with Focus just as I do in Leckhampton already and Tony and Graham do in Warden Hill.
The future of our councils
In this election, you’ll also hear about councils merging or being “split in half”. Here’s what’s going on:
Labour ministers have launched a top-down reorganisation of local government in England. They want more regional authorities headed by elected mayors like London’s and Manchester’s that can take some government powers and spending down to a regional level. Here the most likely ‘strategic authority’ is a West of England authority combining Bristol, Bath and parts of Somerset and all of historic Gloucestershire including Cheltenham, Gloucester, Stroud, Cirencester, the Forest of Dean and South Gloucestershire.
So far so good. But ministers also said they only want one tier of ‘principal council’ below these regional mayoral authorities and we currently have two:
A county council that runs major services like social care, roads and transport and education (Gloucestershire County Council)
District councils that run more local services like planning permission, recycling collection, parks and gardens and arts and culture (Cheltenham and five other districts Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Forest of Dean, Cotswold and Stroud).
So we’ll have to choose what kind of one ‘unitary council’ we want here. The Conservatives want to absorb all seven districts into one giant super-county-council. So even local planning decisions about Leckhampton and Warden Hill, about Cheltenham’s Municipal Offices and Cav and our local green spaces could be taken by councillors with no connection to Cheltenham at all. Our festivals and art gallery and Pump Room and our grants to the Everyman and local good causes would be lumped in with budgets covering Gloucester and the Forest too.
Do we really want the authority that’s been running our roads and pavements running everything? The authority that has messed up the paving on the Prom, whose children’s services were judged ‘inadequate’ and whose transport team thought the Shurdington Road could cope with even more traffic?
Lib Dems don’t. We don’t believe bigger is always better. We want the new councils to have a more local connection, merging three districts each to form a Cheltenham & the Cotswolds council in the east and a Gloucester, Forest & Stroud Valleys council in the west. That will retain at least some of the local links we value so much in our elected decision-makers.
Whatever the pattern of new local councils that emerges from all this, it’s important to have a strong voice speaking up for Leckhampton and for Warden Hill. That’s why I’d be very grateful for your support on 1 May. The polls will be open from 7am to 10pm. It’s helpful to take your official poll card and essential to take PhotoID such as a driver’s licence or passport. Call 01242 262626 and ask for ‘election services’ if you haven’t received a poll card or if you want a postal or proxy vote.
Julia Chandler and Martin Horwood are Leckhampton’s two borough councillors now
Julia and Martin elected in Leckhampton
Lib Dems top the poll across Cheltenham
Lib Dems overtake Conservatives as the second party of local government across England
Julia Chandler has been elected as the second Lib Dem borough councillor for Leckhampton. I was also re-elected and we’d both like to say a huge thank you to everyone who supported us and to everyone else who took part in the election. We’ll do our absolute best to represent you all.
This is the first time both Leckhampton seats have been held by Liberal Democrats. Julia’s win was one of five gains by Lib Dems from the Conservatives across Cheltenham, leaving the Conservative Party with no councillors and the Lib Dems with 36. The Green Party also one won seat from the Conservatives, and Lib Dems and Green Party won and lost one seat each to the other, making the Green Party the official opposition with three seats. The last seat on the council was held by the local party People Against Bureaucracy.
Lib Dem parliamentary candidate Max Wilkinson welcomed the results which make him the hot bet to replace Tory minister Alex Chalk as Cheltenham MP when the Conservatives call the general election. Mr Chalk has voted consistently as instructed by Conservative whips in parliament – 900 times in a row in this parliament! – supporting Boris Johnson on key Brexit, sewage and sleaze votes, Suella Braverman on the Rwanda deportation policy and more recently Rishi Sunak on his reversal of key environmental policies.*
Max is the hot tip to be the next MP for Cheltenham
Across England, the Lib Dems gained over a hundred local government seats, overtaking the Conservatives as the second party of local government.
You can look at Alex Chalk MP’s full voting record on the independent website Public Whip here. The sleaze vote was cast on 3 November 2021 when Alex Chalk voted to support Boris Johnson when he tried to park a parliamentary standards report and save disgraced Tory MP Owen Patterson who had committed an “egregious” breach of lobbying rules while earning £100,000 from private firms. He loyally backed Boris again in the key vote on sewage on 20 October 2021, defeating an amendment that would have curtailed sewage dumping by water companies.
