I am a Londoner by birth, grew up in the Borough of Croydon and was educated at
St Joseph’s College, Upper Norwood (sister school to that of the same name in Ipswich). After A-Levels and a period in work, in the mid ‘80s I joined the Army and started a career as an aircraft engineer, serving for 24 years in several theatres including Germany, Far East, Norway, Northern Ireland and Iraq and attained the rank of Warrant Officer.
It is now my privilege to be employed in the delivery of aircraft maintenance training to the very dedicated servicemen and women who service and repair the Army’s fleet of Apache helicopters at Wattisham.
I am proud to be an elected councillor on the Hadleigh Town Council where I am Chairman of the Sports and Open Spaces Committee, sit on the planning committee and am a trustee of the Hadleigh Market Feoffment Charity. Also, I am the treasurer of the Hadleigh Branch of the Royal British Legion and Chairman of the South Suffolk Conservative Association Hadleigh Branch. I am committed to using my skills and experience to serve the wider community, veterans and serving members of the Armed Forces that reside locally.
My last posting in the Army was to Wattisham Flying Station in 2002 where we were quartered in the town of Hadleigh. After years of moving around at the Army’s bequest we found Suffolk to be an incredibly green oasis and decided to settle here. We love it here and think it as somewhere a bit special and most importantly, a safe haven to raise one’s family. I am married and our children were educated at Hadleigh High School which has a wide and varied curriculum.
My interests include mostly cycling and you might see me riding around Shottley Peninsula in my bike club attire and I often come for walks along the shoreline here stopping for refreshments in the local pubs and cafes. The Peninsula is a fantastic place for leisure and to live, as is the whole county. I also enjoy camping and I spend many of my weekends staked out in some corner of the county experiencing the local facilities.
Vote for me because I am a conservative by conviction; our party’s policies make the most sense for Suffolk in these challenging times. As your councillor for Peninsula I will continue to work hard for the interests of our residents and Suffolk as a whole. I believe fundamentally that our young people must be developed fully so that they might face the challenges of adulthood with full confidence. I would wish to concentrate my efforts on their schooling, sport and other group activity facilities to ensure they get the best personal development as possible. I also believe in lifelong learning for the personal development of adults either through education or training and would also keep an interest in the further education learning providers.
As a town councillor I have been tenacious in querying the spending of council funding to ensure we get the best deal for taxpayers’ money. I have the moral courage to question policies that don’t seem right. For example, the council was going to ban a charity cake sale, bizarrely, because several older councillors believed it infringed health and safety law! I addressed the council policies and procedures as being outdated and in urgent need of correction to ensure that council matters were actioned correctly.
A couple of low level changes I have brought about include the re-siting of a redundant bus shelter so that it could benefit residents a school children alike in inclement weather. I instigated the procurement of a very eye-catching notice board for the town centre and negotiated its location on the wall of an old and very well established business. Small changes that make a notable improvement for many.