I have represented and helped people in my ward.

Generally speaking, I have supported most of the Council’s initiatives, which are too numerous to mention, and include affordable housing, improvement of the A64 (particularly the junctions on the Malton bypass)and environmental initiatives.

I list below some of the matters where I or the Residents Group have challenged Ryedale’s political establishment.

• Firstly, I successfully campaigned to save my local village pub, as the hub of my village community;

• In 2003, I successfully fought for extra money to keep the CAB open all week.

• We have backed my village council, in their fight to put houses onto a site in the very centre of the village, where Ryedale’s planners have granted permission for light industry or what they would call “a distribution centre” (a definition which could include a haulage depot), and we won’t stop until the houses are built;

• Together with others, we have campaigned for a joint-use dry sports centre at Malton School for years. The school badly needs this facility, and will gladly share it with the community.

• While Ryedale was focusing its concern in regard to flood prevention on the market towns of Malton, Norton and Pickering, we tried to help the farms and the villages in the open countryside. We asked the Council, as a first step, to instruct an independent engineer to do a desk study at an estimated cost of just £5,000. They refused.

• We successfully campaigned, with the Gazette, against last year’s outrageous 25% increase in car park charges. We were opposed by 28 councillors – even when the increase was proved to be completely unnecessary, as the £171,000 deficit it was supposed to cover turned out to be a £261,000 surplus.

• We are opposing the merger of Ryedale’s benefits and Revenues services with Hambleton’s for the reasons given in my February Review article, which is now on my website (See Ryedale's Reserves under the Articles tab)

• We wish to see Ryedale’s £8.6M reserves spent in Ryedale – and not kept in the bank and then handed over to a new authority (perhaps a Greater Scarborough Council) following merger and another local government reorganisation.

Details of my views on most of the above issues will be found under the “Articles” tab.