The Green party in South Gloucestershire is urging voters to help elect their first councillors in the district in the upcoming local election. Voters will head to the polls on Thursday, May 4, to choose who should run South Gloucestershire Council.
The Greens currently have no councillors on the council, but the party has recently seen a rapid rise in Bristol, which campaigners said could start to spread out to the outskirts of the city. The party is standing in 16 seats in South Gloucestershire, but is mainly focusing on two seats in Filton.
Siân Harris is the acting coordinator of the South Gloucestershire Greens and candidate in Emersons Green. In an interview ahead of the election, she said her party had already been successful in campaigning against controversial new road junctions, called ‘through-abouts’.
Read more: May local elections: What each party in South Gloucestershire is promising to do
“We’ve got candidates across South Gloucestershire,” she said, “but we’re focusing on Filton. With the Greens in Bristol now the largest party in Bristol City Council, there’s a natural progression to the more urban areas that are really close to Bristol.
“It’s going well. There’s a small but dedicated team going out and meeting people and hearing about their concerns. We’ve got 16 candidates standing and we really want to make sure that people have a choice as much as possible on their ballots.”
The Green party is best known for its commitment to acting on climate change and the environment. Ms Harris said while other parties talk about taking action, in reality many council decisions are still made without considering the effects on the climate.
“It hasn’t been embedded in decision-making,” she said. “It’s a thing that everyone says they’re committed to, but it hasn’t filtered through to every decision about transport, housing, use of land, and protecting green spaces. But we want to push for a more meaningful embedding of commitments to the environment.
“We want to provide a Green voice. In the Green party, we’re run much more at a local level. With the Conservatives and Labour, there’s a top-down structure and things are decided centrally.
“All the leaflets I have seen from every party talk about environmental commitments. That’s the effect you get when you have Greens in the room. We’ve had good relationships with some of the councillors and opportunities to influence things.”
One topic the Greens have already successfully campaigned on was their opposition to new through-abouts on the Bristol ring road. These hugely unpopular plans for confusing junctions would have cost £30 million, but were dropped in November last year, amid road safety concerns.
“We had a significant campaign win last year with the plan for through-abouts,” she said. “We and a lot of residents had concerns about the plans. They didn’t do anything for buses or improving cycle paths. They were just making the roads bigger.”
Ms Harris said some people disregarded her party as “tree-huggers”, but said the 16 Green candidates in South Gloucestershire all have plenty of experience. In the last election four years ago, the Greens only stood six candidates, so the party has grown since then.
“A lot of candidates have a lot of experience in housing and the environment, and we have a lot of scientists standing,” she said. “20 or 30 years ago there was probably a harmful stereotype about ‘tree-huggers’, and people still sometimes have that idea about the Green party. It’s completely unfounded. Our candidates have a high level of experience and skills.
“South Gloucestershire is quite a rural district. The decisions we make for a small village don’t necessarily translate well to somewhere attached to a big city. We have seen a lot of success in Bristol from having a lot of Green councillors. I think the urban areas on the outskirts of Bristol have the same kind of culture.”
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