There are now less than six months to go until the 2025 local elections, which will be on Thursday, the 1st of May 2025.
I will again be standing for Whittington Division, having been selected as the Lib Dem candidate. Last time, I narrowly lost by 34 votes.
The election result in Whitting Division last time
May 2025 will mark 20 years since I last held a top-tier council seat at the county level. This time, I will be going all out for a win.
On the 1st of May, residents will get the opportunity to throw out the incompetent, wasteful Conservative administration who have trashed the Shropshire Council’s finances.
Conservative Leadership: 16 years of failure
Come polling day, Shropshire Conservatives will have been running Shropshire Council into the ground for 16 years. Time after time, the Conservatives sold residents down the river with incompetent leadership, bad strategic planning, bad financial decision-making, and generally poor service delivery. IPnE debacle, purchasing shopping centre without a proper valuation, poor planning control allowing indiscriminate house building, roads falling apart
Why am I standing again?
I am still frustrated by lousy service and incompetence at corporate and individual councillor levels. It shouldn’t be this way
Over the many years since I first stood for election in 1995, I have seen councillors put themselves before their residents, more interested in social climbing than service. Others have slacked and not put in the required hours that they are paid to work on your behalf. Some claim large allowances and expenses with nothing tangible to show for it on the ground. Some are remote and unapproachable or unreachable. Some don’t support or engage with their parish councils as they should. Some take your support entirely for granted, with zero engagement between elections. Members have even been chastised for falling asleep in meetings since I was last a county councillor. Others have been told off for playing games during meetings. Councillors turning up to meetings without reading the papers for the meetings.
Thankfully, this only applies to a small minority of councillors, but it does cast a stain upon all of us who work hard to represent our residents in the way they would expect. Many more councillors go above and beyond to help residents.
I believe if you are being paid to do a job, then you do a proper job. If you aren’t being paid, then some tasks are part of your civic duty and intrinsically part of the role of a councillor. If you can do that or you struggle to list your achievements since you first stood for election, then you are in the wrong job and should resign.
If you want a councillor who will listen and work hard on your behalf, vote for me next May.
