Braintree and Witham Liberal Democrats

Hedingham County Division

comprising the Braintree District Wards of:-

Hedingham and Maplestead (3 seats), Stour Valley N & S, the Bumpsteads, Upper Colne and Yeldham

The Hedingham Candidate for the May 2013 Essex County Council

election was Steve Bolter,

e-mail hlibdem@cbb4u.co.uk

Steve says look at the list of candidates' addresses displayed outside the polling station. Would you want to be represented by a candidate from south Essex? Would he or she know the Hedingham area's needs?!

About Steve

Steve and his wife Mary have lived in the Division, at Gestingthorpe, since 1983. He is a retired physics and maths FE lecturer. Their sons atended Hedingham School.

He was a Braintree District Councillor for the Hedingham and Maplestead Ward from 2004 to 2007, when he served on the Planning, Environment and Modernisation committees/task groups.

From 2007 to date he has been a member of Gestingthorpe Parish Council, on which he leads on planning. He represents the PC on the National Grid Bramford to Twinstead Community Forum and The Gestingthorpe Educational Foundation. He led on bringing Broadband to Gestingthorpe.

Steve is member of the national executive of the Green Liberal Democrats.

He sits on the Liberal Democrat national Policy Working Groups on "Skills and 16+ Education" and "Zero Carbon Britain 2050",

He is a member of the Colne Stour Countryside Association and the Thames Sailing Barge trust. He enjoys skiing, jazz and clasical music.

For Liberal Democrats priorities for the 2013 Essex County Council elections go to the searate Our Manifesto page.

For some of Steve's activities scroll down to the News section of this page.

This page will be updated during the election period. Last updated 20 April 2013.

Steve's Election Statement, 20^th April 2013

The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity. We champion the freedom, dignity and well-being of individuals, we acknowledge and respect their right to freedom of conscience and their right to develop their talents to the full.

This election is to select the Councillors who will run Essex County Council and look after the interests of the residents and businesses in their Divisions. If it is used as a way to comment on unrelated issues, or to chastise National government, Essex is unlikely get the councillors it needs. Even though they have an effect on Essex, issues such as EU membership are matters for Westminster and are a distraction from local issues in the remit of councillors..

District and County Councillors have traditionally used Parish Councils to help them keep in touch with the needs of residents across this vast division, which stretches from the Bumpsteads to Bures Hamlet.

I note that the UKIP candidate for Hedingham lives in Basildon, the BNP candidate in Heybridge and the Green candidate in Witham. I wonder how many of the 35 parishes in our division they are familiar with, how many Parish Councils and Village Meetings any one of them would attend if elected and what the travel expenses would be if he or she did attend many! Do they really want to look after the specific needs of Hedingham, or are they using a County election to play national politics?

The Labour candidate is from nearby Halstead, but only the Liberal Democrat and Tory candidates live in the Division. My wife and I are in our 30^th year of residence in Gestingthorpe, in the Hedingham Division.

The Westminster Coalition does not constrain Lib Dem Councillors. On the outgoing Council the 60 Conservatives were held to account by the 11 Lib Dems of the official opposition. Labour and Independents had 2 seats each. I hope the Lib Dems at least gain sufficient extra seats to enable the party to be an even stronger voice on the council, whether as part of a ruling group or as a stronger opposition. Opposition scrutiny of the County Cabinet is essential, but it needs to be undertaken in the interests of Essex and not be party political posturing. As I did when I was a District Councillor, if elected I would work for cross party cooperation to find the best solutions for our residents rather that for political point scoring.

For many of our residents, health and other key services come from towns or villages across the Suffolk border. Essex has to ensure that there is adequate cross border cooperation, for example between Essex social services and Suffolk Health Trusts.

Over the last 25 years Governments have reduced the degree of control counties have over local schools and colleges, but I believe that the Council must use all means it can to ensure that all colleges and schools contribute to providing first class educational opportunity across the county, especially in rural areas where choice is more restricted. This includes being very careful in the selection of governors it nominates.

There are few jobs locally and, with the exception those close to Bures, all transport has to be by road. Congestion black-spots need to be engineered out and public transport interchanges need to be improved. Essex needs a strategy to encourage a better balance between jobs and housing, and to ensure that people who live in rural areas can access good quality education and training. Public transport should be suitable for taking those without cars to work or college and Essex should also make it convenient enough to entice people to get out of their cars.

We welcome improvements to roads and the local services installed under them. However in recently parts of the Hedingham Division have suffered from frequent prolonged road closures requiring long diversions, with the closures often remaining at night and weekends when no work is in progress. I am endeavouring to ensure that closure applications are more rigorously assessed and that closures are restricted to the times that they are necessary. I am also requesting better information about closures and their effect on bus services.

For those in rural areas the use of Broadband can help compensate for the lack of nearby facilities. It can reduce the need for travel and facilitate home-working. I was responsible for bringing Broadband to Gestingthorpe and will back schemes to bring Broadband cover to the whole of the Division and to make sure that capacity in all areas keeps pace with demand. The Lib Dems want ECC meetings to be routinely webcast.

I will resist any pressure to revive plans for multiple runways at Stansted and work to ensure air traffic management has minimising disturbance of local residents as a priority. I will continue to work to ensure that major infrastructure projects, such as the new 400 000 volt line, cause the minimum possible impact on our communities and on the landscape.

Please vote for me to Join the Lib Dem team on the County Council, and please remember even if I do not win, every Lib Dem vote recorded contributes to the standing of those Lib Dems who are elected.

Steve Bolter

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Hedingham page published and promoted by Braintree and Witham Liberal Democrats, 54 Grymes Dyke Way, Stanway, Colchester CO3 0QT

on behalf of Steve Bolter, Wickham House, Gestingthorpe, Halstead, CO9 3BH

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News

Energy Bill and the Dash for Gas (March 2013)

Steve was editor of the Green Lib Dem commentary on the draft Energy Bill. It concluded that the propsed carbon emission limits for power stations were not strict enough. Tim Yeo, the Tory MP for Sudbury and chairman of the All Party Select Committee on Energy, has proposed an amendment to the Energy Bill (2013) which calls for an electricity generation carbon emissions target for 2020 to be set by this Parliament. This would temper the Dash for Gas resulting from the policy of George Osbourn.

[See http://greenlibdems.org.uk/en/document/public-documents/briefings/the-energy-bill-gld-report for details.]

Steve Bolter has called for Lib Dem MPs and our local MP to support this ammendment.

New 400 000 volt line from Ipswich to Twinstead (February 2013)

The local Consultation group, of which Steve Bolter is a member, managed to convince National Grid that the new line should be undergrounded where it crosses the Stour. The undergounding will continue until it joins the existing line to south Braintree, meaning that there will be no new 400 kV overhead line in the Braintree District part of the route.

National Grid was further persuaded to turn the underground line south, so that three existing pylons on the line south to Braintree could be removed from the precious landscape around Loshes Meadow and Sparrows Hal in Twinstead: some of Steve's evidence was quoted in the decision.

To make room for the new overhead line on the Suffolk part of the route, the 132 kV line providing the backup supply for the Belchamp substation which serves Hedingham and Sudbury is being removed. A new 132 kV link to Belchamp will be needed - possibly via a large transformer station, fed from the 400 kV line somewhere between Twinstead and Castle Hedingham. If this, or the locally preferred option of a 132 kV underground line from Braintree, is adopted, Steve believes that the 132 kV overhead line line made redundant should be removed. (UK Power Networks want to keep it in case it, finds a use for it in the future.)

Emergency Motion Aviation in the East of England Conference October 2012

The East of England Conference notes that:-

1. i. air transport contributes to global warming and produces noise and chemical pollution around airports;
2. ii. for sustainability the world average intensity of use of air transport has to be well below the current level for the East of England.

The East of England Conference:-

1 supports the Lib Dem policy of rejection of new runways at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, and of any plans for an airport in the Thames Estuary;

2 reaffirms its opposition to extra runways at Stansted;

3 deplores lobbying by senior Conservatives in favour of the construction of extra runways at Stansted as an option for the creation of a new hub;

4 calls for the retention of existing limits on passengers and movements at Stansted;

5 calls for ban on night flights at East of England Airports.*²

Draft for proposers speech

At September's Federal Conference the motion "A Sustainable Future for Aviation" was carried.The Federal motion had much good content, including the need to address the global and local environmental impacts of air transport; but it also had a difficult to reconcile thread running through it; which assumed airports to be important drivers of UK jobs and growth, and assumed having a major aviation hub in the UK to be essential for a healthy economy.

Aviation does create jobs, but many are overseas jobs, at the expense of British jobs:

The Federal motion was amended to acknowledge the Commission recently set up by Government "to identify options for maintaining this country's status as an international hub for aviation" and to task the Commission with basing its recommendations on Five Key Principals, the first 3 being

• Accessibility from N and S (which ticks the box for much of our region )
• Maximum hubbing potential
• And Growth within Carbon Budgets (which to achieve Lib Dem budgets means aviation using up carbon savings generated elsewhere and transferring direct flights from other airports to the hub.

I doubt that increasing airport capacity would produce a significant net increase in jobs in the UK, or that, in the era of e-mail and video conferencing, international hub status is of significant benefit to the economy. I cannot see that this thread is part of a Sustainable Aviation policy.

Aviation's contribution to global warming is out of all proportion to the role it plays in people's lives. The ease and speed of air travel encourages frequent long journeys, producing large amounts of CO₂. Aviation produces additional warming because water vapour and soot emitted at altitude seed a blanket of evening cloud to trap the heat of the day, and also produces high levels of noise, particulate and chemical pollution in the vicinity of busy airports.

The worst contribution to global pollution is at take-off and landing, making compound air journeys via hubs more polluting than point to point flights over the same distance.

Europe has more than its fair share of world aviation, the UK has more than its fair share of European aviation and the East of England Region has more than its fair share of the both the advantages and the disadvantages of aviation. If those in developing countries flew as much as we do, there would be runaway climate change.

For sustainability the world average rate of use of air transport has to be well below current usage in the East of England.

If there is any expansion in UK aviation, it should be the provision of more direct flights from regional surface transport hubs outside the London super-region.

A hub airport anywhere in England would have a large population within its noise footprint.

If large numbers of flights are concentrated in a single hub, the noise nuisance for its local population would be enormous. Aviation is better thinly spread.

Rather hub airport, we should be improving the connectivity of surface transport and make making rail more attractive [for example by reducing the 1¼ hours one has to allow for changing trains between Liverpool Street and Euston or St Pancras. ]

Why is this an East of England matter? The Tory right and the Aviation Lobby have been emboldened by the Lib Dem acceptance of the quest for a hub and seem pretty confident that Tory commitment to no new runways in the East of England will be a will be a one election wonder.

There has been intensive lobbying:-for more intensive use of existing runways; with the associated increase stacking and in emissions and for new runways, including the easy option for a hub, the revival of long abandoned plans for a four runway Stansted, even though it would not fit the other two Lib Dem Key Principles minimal impact to the local population and to environment.

The federal motion included a call for a night flight ban at Heathrow only. Night flights would be displaced to other airports near London.

Because of these pressures, I believe we should:-

• reaffirm the Lib Dem policy of rejection of new runways at Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Boris Island,
• Emphasize our opposition to the lobbying for a multi-runway hub at Stansted
• Call on Government not to raise current limits at Stansted ,
• And call for an end to night flights in our Region.

Proposed by Steve Bolter

Liberal Democrats say no to new runways at Stansted

August 2012

The Liberal Democrats are pushing for a new strategy for aviation which balances the benefits the industry brings as a driver of jobs with the harm it causes to the environment.

The strategy, which will be put to members at the party's Autumn Conference in a policy motion, reinforces the Liberal Democrats' opposition to new runways at London's airports. Key proposals include no new runways at Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted and no airport capacity expansion which could allow for aircraft movements above the carbon emissions cap set by the independent Committee on Climate Change

The Liberal Democrats want UK aviation policy to be based on accessibility from north and south and minimal impact on the local population and minimal impact on the global environment and maximum 'hub airport' potential.

Julian Huppert, our Cambridge MP, who will proposing the Aviation motion said:-

"Aviation has the potential to become one of the greatest threats to the global environment. Unmitigated expansion of aviation would cause the UK to miss its carbon reduction targets."

"Enough is enough. The public deserve an airport policy which balances the benefits from aviation with the harms it can do to the environment globally and locally. That is exactly what we'll deliver."

Steve Bolter 6^th February 2012

No to Any More Runways in the south east of England (East of England, SE and London Regions) (20 Jan 2012)

Local Lib Dems are pleased that senior Lib Dems, including Norman Baker (Transport) and Nick Clegg were swift to reafirm Lib Dem policy when Boris started promoting a scheme a new airport off the Isle of Grain. The Party is standing up to the Tories, who stated their opposition the expansion of aviation to boost their vote in the election, but who now show signs of caving in to the aviation lobby.

Recent Lib Dem pronouncements have referred to no new runways at Heathrow or anywhere in the south east. Norman Baker has confirmed that this refers to the geographical south east, including Stansted and the whole of the East of England Region, not just the South-East Region.

Aviation is a major contributor to Global Climate Change and cannot be allowed to expand without limit. The UK already has more than its fair share of flights, and the south-east has a more than fair share of UK flights. If there is any expansion of aviation capacity in England, it should be in the midlands, the north or the west.

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Steve has replied to Caroline Lucas's call for Lib Dems to desert to the Green Party

Steve argued that this might make Caroline feel more powerful,but that it would not gain any votes for green issues in this Parliament.

Lib Dem members should be giving their MPs the backing they need to help them ensure that even more Lib Dem policies become Government policies.

Our members deserting them would weaken their power to kerb the Tory right and bring in more green policies.

For the full text click here

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In the May 2011 District Council Election Steve Bolter contested one of the 3 Hedingham seats.

It was a quiet election with only the Tories and us putting out any information.

As the Lib Dems only had one candidate, we suggested our supporters gave their second vote to the Green candidate, which may account for their knocking Labour into 6th, 7th and 8th places.

Our vote of 661 was only 65 down on 2007, when we probably had some tactical voting from Labour supporters, but almost the same as that which gained us the seat in the 2004 by-election.

This time, with the Conservatives coming out in force to vote no to AV, their vote was generally up but one Torry suffered a loss of 70 votes.

We were fourth, following the three Tories. The Greens, came fifth, followed by the three Labour candidates, who gained an average of 96 votes each over 2007.

Steve Bolter notes that the highest vote went to the youngest candidate, and this was District Wide. We need more young members.

We would like to field more young candidates in the 2013 County Election and 2015 Braintree District Election.

Without the AV effect, and when national Tory policies start to bite, the Tory vote could drop back considerably, making Hedingham and Maplestead winnable again in 2015.

May 2011 District Council Election .

2004 to 2011 Results compared.

Links to publications

Spring Focus 2011 Election Focus 2011 Hedingham Herald September 2011 (local edition of County Newspaper)