Suffolk County Council 2021 Elections

Tower Division Candidates

In 2021 Steph Holland and Matt Rowe stood for the Suffolk County Council Elections in Bury St Edmunds Tower Division for the West Suffolk Green Party.

Matt and Steph Banner
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Meet our Green Party Candidates for the County Council Elections on 6th May 2021

Tower Division Candidates

Courtesy of Tom Soper Photography

Steph Holland

Steph has lived in the Tower division since 2012, having moved back home to Bury after university to start a family with her husband, Neil. Steph and her nine-year-old daughter Amelia were both born at West Suffolk Hospital and she spent her whole childhood living in the area. She is the founding director of a community interest company called West Suffolk Hive CIC, which aims to create a family-centred community space in a natural environment to foster a connection with nature, improve wellbeing and share skills and knowledge. Over the last year they have been developing an eco community centre at their site just outside Rougham, where they host workshops and classes for the community relating to the environment, wellbeing and education. The organisation hosted the Bury Green Fair in 2020, and has published an Eco Directory of a large selection of environmentally-friendly businesses and organisations in West Suffolk. During lockdown, Steph founded the Hive Eco Forum, a group dedicated to pursuing a sustainable future for West Suffolk.

Since moving back to Bury she has played an active role in the community, setting up two community organisations, St Edmundsbaby and the West Suffolk Home Ed Hub, hosting free family events in the town centre, publishing free magazines and directories providing information to the community, and running a variety of support groups. She has been on the committee for the local NCT (National Childbirth Trust) group, the West Suffolk Hospital Maternity Services Liaison Committee, the Suffolk Forest School Association, and has recently taken on the administration for the River Lark Catchment Partnership CIO.

Her background is in education, having trained as a Music Teacher at university, teaching the violin, piano and singing to several students in and around Bury St Edmunds, and working as a Forest School Practitioner since qualifying in 2017, running Nature Explorers sessions for families and children up to the age of twelve.

Steph feels passionate about our community in Bury St Edmunds, about the environment, and about giving a voice to those who do not feel heard. She is very proactive and works hard to make a difference in everything she does.

Courtesy of Tom Soper Photography

Matt Rowe

Matt settled in Suffolk in 2016. He moved here from Shropshire to be closer to family, having previously resided in Manchester and Kathmandu, Nepal.

Matt’s passion is sustainable food which works in unison, and not against nature. Founder of organic food company The Happy Veg Box, he believes that redesigning our food system and repairing our soils are one of our greatest hopes to tackle climate change. At present The Happy Veg Box runs an organic weekly delivery throughout West Suffolk and a regenerative market garden. The market garden provides most of Matt’s vegetables and enables the vision of the company to come to fruition; promoting soil health and providing habitats for wildlife to grow in balance with nature.

Matt has been running community projects since moving to Bury St Edmunds, with food always at its heart. He had started work on a Local Food Manifesto and ran regular community supper clubs, where people could pay what they could afford for the meals. Although currently on hold due to Covid-19, he is excited to be linking up to the West Suffolk Hive Eco Forum to continue to ask the question ‘What if everyone had access to high quality food that was grown and produced locally?

Matt is passionate about building resilient and vibrant communities. Recently, in the first lockdown, he provided over 500 free community food bundles to vulnerable people. This initiative brought communities together as they fundraised the initiative.It is community collaboration and cooperation like this that provides Matt with hope that we will be able to organise our way out of the changes of inequality, biodiversity loss and climate change.

Matt lives in Suffolk with his wife, Ruth, and their dog - Grunge. They moved here after spending two years in Kathmandu, Nepal. He spent his time there working part-time in a school and helping local environmental initiatives. The trip was cut short as they experienced the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that devastated the region.
Before Nepal, Matt was in Manchester studying business and after graduating working on a number of environmental issues.

He was a facilitator and author of the Manchester City Council (MCC) Climate Change Action Plan and sat as a member of the MCC Environmental Advisory Panel. Whilst being involved with a number of community groups, he also worked as a youth worker. The final years of his stay in the city allowed him to establish a community cooperative that hosted and managed a large community environmental festival in the city - Manchester’s environmental festival called Envirolution. The event regularly hosts over 5000 people for a free event with over 100 performances, stalls and workshops.

His childhood was spent in Shropshire, so he feels very at home in the beautiful green landscape of Suffolk.
Matt feels very proud to be able to stand for the Green Party and honoured to be able to work for the people of West Suffolk. He is a guardian of our planet and wants to do everything he can to be a positive and compassionate member of his community.

Blackbourne Division Candidate

Warren Lakin

Warren Lakin

I am an East Londoner who has lived in Ixworth village since 2013. I recently retired from full time work having spent 40 years as a producer, promoter, fundraiser and occasional performer in professional arts and entertainment.

In Ixworth, I contribute to the Newsletter/Magazine and I’m active in the projects of the Green Ixworth group.

I joined The Green Party because it was the only political party committed to a serious agenda that prioritised saving the planet, by tackling the global threat of climate change.

My personal concerns include the dangers posed to residents and wildlife in the countryside by air pollution, caused by pesticides sprayed on arable farmland. I stand for protection of the environment and creation of new ‘green’ jobs in agriculture, food production and the energy sector.

I am a member of Suffolk Wildlife Trust; Royal Society for the Protection of Birds; Greenpeace; National Trust; Royal Horticultural Society.

I was an active trades unionist and I am a campaigner for human rights supporting Amnesty International and Medical Aid for Palestinians. I am a patron of Humanists UK and a voluntary fundraiser for research charity Target Ovarian Cancer. I enjoy attending Bury’s Theatre Royal; The Apex; Abbeygate Cinema and Jazz at the Hunter Club.

Brandon Candidate

Will Tanner

Clare Candidate

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Julius Bell

I was born and raised in Stoke by Clare and, having lived elsewhere for several years, I returned to the village in 1995. Since then I have been running my gardening and landscaping business in and around the Clare area.

For many years I have been acutely aware that the way we live is not sane and is not sustainable. And, with increasing alarm at the inaction of governments around the world, I decided to join the Green Party to help push the Green movement agenda.

On a personal level, for example,  I see the daily effect of pollution on my partner's health with her COPD and asthma symptoms constantly exacerbated by the traffic outside the house on a busy A-road. On a more objective level, my deep concern is about the mad disjunction between the "modern world" mentality and the reality of global and local ecosystems, environment and the natural world in general that is perpetuated by popular culture and degraded tone of public discourse.

Beyond my work I am interested in healing and earth energies and am a member of the Dowsing Anglia group based in Bury St Eds.

Eastgate & Moreton Hall Candidate

Jess Livsey

Exning & Newmarket Candidate

Caroline Wheeler

Caroline Wheeler

Hardwick Candidate

Chris Dexter Mills

Chris Dexter Mills

The last twelve months have been difficult for all of us. Whilst there have been challenges there have also been some brighter moments and we have seen outstanding acts of kindness and support from key workers and members of our communities. Covid-19 has challenged us to find different ways of leading our daily lives. We may also have noticed some changes in our local environment; less pollution, less noise, more time for reflection, reading, exercise etc. Many of us have discovered alternative ways of doing things, and developed approaches to life which minimise the damage caused to the environment. A more considered, environmentally friendly approach to issues could be a lasting legacy of our encounter with Covid-19.

Our journey to tackle environmental issues has already started at a local level with a number of initiatives including the declaration of a Global Climate Emergency. More people are discovering that we can make a difference. Green councillors act on behalf of the whole community by listening to those around them and considering the impact of the decisions being made. Throughout Suffolk there is increasing support for green issues. In the May County Council and local by-elections we have a chance to make lasting improvements to the quality of life in our wonderful county by returning as many Green candidates as possible.

Haverhill Cangle Candidates

Nicola Forsdyke

Nicola Forsdyke

Mandy Leathers

Haverhill East and Kedington Candidate

Jeremy Mynott

Mildenhall Candidate

Jack Blomfield

Newmarket and Red Lodge Candidate

Simon Morse

Row Heath Candidate

Claire Unwin

Thingoe North Candidate

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Oliver Ingwall King

I first became involved with the Green Party in 2003 when I realised that a career in offshore oil and gas exploration was not for me. I realised in that time offshore that fossil fuels were literally a ‘dead’ industry and that this clunky hulk sitting in the north sea was not the vision of the future that we should be pursuing. Since then I have worked on community projects, for local councils, for corporate engineering and environmental giants, charity environmental groups and for myself, finally setting up a social enterprise whilst also working for West Suffolk Council. I have been fortunate to live through the green downturn (imposed by the Conservative government in 2009) and glad to be involved in the global exponential up turn that we are currently in. My skills are in carbon management and energy management and green energy but I am passionate about all things sustainable and how they can improve our society and all of our economic prospects. I have seen how money spent in “the right way” can have huge social, economic and environmental benefits and I know that we need to get SCC to take a more holistic and less politically limited view on its budget. Working together we can help jump start Suffolk’s environmental and climate challenge activity whilst also improving the well being for those most in need.

 

Thingoe South Candidate

Vicki Martin

Vicki Martin

I had never been in the slightest politically minded until about six years ago, when I joined the Green Party – more to support them than to become actively involved.

Brexit, the climate crisis, the NHS, planning, transport, poverty, benefits, taxation – none of these things were being addressed in a fair, logical or long term manner, and that concerned me. I also was saddened and alarmed by increasing divisions world-wide. The only party that seems truly committed to overcome these issues is the Green Party.

For me, politics should be about what kind of world we want to live in, not just how to look after our own interests.

I originally trained as a veterinary surgeon, but have worked as a freelance medical illustrator/designer, as a research assistant at both Addenbrooke’s and Papworth Hospitals, and as a private gardener.

I also have a strong therapeutic interest, notably in bodywork and especially post-traumatic stress (PTSD). The more people are stressed out by financial difficulties and ‘isms’ (racism, sexism etc) the more we likely we are to see others as enemies and to react strongly and impulsively. This does not lead to a well-functioning society.

At home I live with three dogs and a horse, have built a Japanese-inspired garden (approved for opening under the National Gardens Scheme) and enjoy photography and Chinese brush painting. I was once a keen cyclist: in recent years my life has been dominated by the need to ensure care for my mother, who died in 2020.

My Green credentials include 10KWp of solar panels with Powerwall batteries for storage, and a high temperature air source heat pump installed through the renewable heat incentive (RHI). I drive an electric car which is usually powered by the sun, even in winter.