A Message From Steve

Steve 2

I’m delighted to have been selected as the Green Party’s candidate for Binscombe and Charterhouse in the coming election. I’ve represented local residents on Waverley Borough Council over the past four years and, as one of the councillors for Charterhouse on Godalming Town Council I’ve worked closely with Clare Weightman, the current Green Party councillor for Binscombe.

I’ve spent all my working life working in education – and I’m passionate about creating a better future for our children and young people. That is why I want Godalming Town Council to continue with its current work, led by Clare Weightman, trying to secure more places for high quality childcare provision locally and further develop our recently established Youth Service. I am also working hard on Waverley Borough Council and Godalming Town Council to ensure that local government does as much as it can to help local particularly those who are most in need – to face the current cost of living crisis.

As a Green Party councillor and portfolio holder for Environment & Sustainability working on Waverley’s executive with LibDem and Labour councillors, I’m acutely aware of the threat that the climate and the ecological emergency represents to our children’s and grandchildren’s futures. I fervently believe that we need to act now in order to protect the world we’ll leave for them and protect our green spaces and our precious wildlife. We have already achieved much in this area in Waverley with our policies on trees and woodlands, protecting our ecology and eliminating pesticide use on public land.

If elected as your councillor on Thursday 4th May, I will continue working hard for my local community and I very much hope to have your support. As a result of new government requirements, you will require ID to vote.

HAVING GREENS IN THE ROOM HAS NEVER BEEN MORE IMPORTANT.

Your Green Party councillors will continue implementing our CLIMATE ACTION PLAN which was independently ranked as the fifth most robust plan of all the boroughs and districts in the UK by an independent climate organisation, Climate Emergency UK.

We believe in:

  • a robust response to our climate emergency and continuing to oppose fossil fuel extraction in our countryside
  • more genuinely affordable energy efficient homes and more and better social and genuinely affordable housing
  • revitalising our high streets and building a sustainable transport infrastructure

Steve Williams has worked hard as a ward councillor to protect green spaces and pick up local planning concerns. As Environment portfolio holder on Waverley, he has worked to take action on our climate and ecological emergency.

Green Party councillors, Steve and Clare have worked to encourage tree planting and rewilding in the ward and in Godalming and the wider Waverley, banning harmful pesticides and promoting biodiversity.

Greens believe in working for a better, greener future. Working with others, we have

  • developed a widely used Youth Centre in Godalming, with plans to extend this provision;
  • enabled work to start on the Guildford-Godalming Greenway and made plans for walking & cycling routes across the borough;
  • worked to win a judicial review to protect Dunsfold from drilling for fossil fuels;
  • promoted biodiversity, cleaner rivers, trees and woodlands;
  • expanded provision of sustainable, social housing; and,
  • begun decarbonising Waverley’s buildings, including Leisure Centres.