Andrew is the Green Party candidate for West Yorkshire mayor in the May 2021 elections. He has been a councillor on Kirklees Council since 1999. He is the Green Party's energy spokesperson and has initiated a number of pioneering policies including proposing the first universally free insulation scheme in Kirklees in 2007. Andrew has also been a delegate to four UN climate change talks and in 2018 influenced the global agreement to give more say at a local and regional level on action to reduce carbon emissions.
Air pollution is deadly. That is a fact we can’t hide from any longer. This week, a coroner ruled that dangerous levels of air pollution “made a material contribution” to the death of nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah in Central London. Before her death of a severe asthma attack in February 2013, Ella endured numerous seizures and […]
Kirklees Council has recently agreed to build a new library in Birkby, just outside Huddersfield. I cast my eyes over the council report and saw some positives on the environmental standards. It said they would incorporate an air-sourced heat pump and a sustainable urban drainage system, but the big downer was when the report proudly […]
The Conservative government’s proposals in the business and planning bill have been justly criticised for being far too developer-friendly, to the detriment of the local environment, climate change, housing standards and local democracy. The bill panders to the interests of big builders and not those of millions of people who need low cost, secure housing […]
Local government in the UK is a dog’s breakfast. It is a mixture of different structures and electoral systems which is dizzying in its complexity. But change is on the horizon. We have single-tier metropolitan and city councils with responsibility for all local government functions. In other areas you have double-tier areas with county councils […]