It’s been a busy 11 days since the election! So busy I’ve not been able to properly thank everyone who supported and voted for me on May 6th.

As the count was delayed until the 9th May and went on until late in the evening, it wasn’t until the 10th that it began to sink in that I’d actually won, beating a long standing councillor who had become something of a fixture in the area.

It was a fantastic election for the Greens across the country with us winning nearly 100 new seats. Some of the notable highlights were :

• Greens in first place across Bristol West and Sheffield Central constituencies
• Gained representation on 18 councils, bringing the total tally of councils with Green representation to 141.
• Gained 99 seats – now 445 councillors across England and Wales
• Won 24 seats on Bristol City Council – now joint largest party with Labour.

And of course in Oxford we won many new seats with an extra seat gained on the city council and 2 new seats on the county council, myself included! After we retained our original seat on the county with Dr Pete Sudbury, that gives us 3 seats along with Robin Bennett who is also the deputy leader of South Oxfordshire District Council. I’m looking forward to working with both of them.

The out-turn of all this in Oxfordshire is that the Conservatives have been pushed into being the opposition party on the county for the first time ever! While they are currently showing as having 22 seats on the council, they actually only have 21 as an extra seat was gained due to a mistake made at the count that will be corrected in the high court in the next few weeks. There’s also some exciting news in the pipeline about what that means for the next administration of the council that I can’t reveal at the moment. But look out on Monday evening for an important announcement!

Meanwhile, the Green surge continues, and thanks to you I am part of that! So a huge thank you goes out to everyone who worked on my campaign, donated money to it and of course to the people who voted for me. I will do my best to not let you down. I will be starting work on the council in the next week or so, after all the dust has settled and I am properly plugged into the systems there. The first part of that is the council AGM which will be held on Tuesday in Banbury.

In the meantime, please feel free to contact me with any issues you want me to look at. My first priority is going to be looking at what we can do about the state of the roads in this area. I’ve already been contacted by several people who have raised this with me and I know from my own experience that this is a very important local issue. I hope I can hit the ground running and make some visible progress on this soon.

It’s going to be an exciting few years with huge changes afoot in Oxfordshire and you’re all part of that, so thank you all again!