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
On Thursday 1 May, local people elected me as your new county councillor for the Leckhampton and Warden Hill Division. Thank you to everyone who voted for me. I will strive to represent everyone locally regardless of who you voted for.
I’d like to thank my predecessor Emma Nelson for her service to the area. Although we are from different parties and obviously took a different view of the county council’s past record, I recognise the affection in which Emma is held locally and her hard work on our behalf. I’m pleased that in these divisive times we both fought respectful election campaigns.
Although local government reorganisation looms over the county council as it does over other local councils, at the moment Gloucestershire County Council takes the lion’s share of our council tax and is responsible for major budgets like transport, roads and pavements, adult social care and children’s services as well as many other smaller but important services like waste disposal and libraries. It is very likely that with 27 out of 55 seats across the county the Liberal Democrats will now form the county administration and we take seriously our pledges to address many of the issues raised during the election campaign. These include the quality of our roads and pavements, the need to improve children’s services, commit the county ever more clearly to environmental sustainability and tackle waste.
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.
