Candidates standing for the Bothel and Wharrels ward in the upcoming Cumberland Council election

Voters will take to the polls on May 5 to elect Unitary councillors for the new authority.

Candidates standing for the Bothel and Wharrels ward in Allerdale have highlighted the main issues they hope to tackle in the area. 

Malcolm Grainger 

Conservative 

CONSERVATIVE: Malcolm Grainger

It’s probably not surprising, that my priority is sorting out our rural roads. Residents and visitors are tormented by potholes, frustrated by speeding drivers and sick to death with the state of signs and markings that haven’t been sorted in years. My priority is bringing back some common sense to highways, making sure that potholes are fixed, that roads are cleaned if they’ve been covered with muck and that the highway is maintained to a good standard.

I want to see improvements; simple things like litter picking, street cleaning and looking after our communities. With cutting the number of councils and councillors, we can afford to have such improvements – by cutting these councils we can cut more grass!

Finally, rural communities need to see a fairer share of the money spent by the council. I will lobby for more rural community investment into parks, broadband improvements and other civic amenities.

Jill Perry 

Green 

GREEN: Jill Perry

Jill was born and brought up in Loweswater, the daughter of a tenant farmer. She has been a campaigner on environmental and social issues for over 30 years. Bothel and Wharrels is a large, mainly rural but varied ward and we have done a lot of work on the doorsteps to find out what the main things are that people are worried about. The issues that came up were more or less universal.

The issue of making housing truly affordable - the current definition is not fit for purpose - so that young people are not forced out of the area. And not just affordable to buy or rent but also affordable to run by high standards of insulation, and renewable heating and electricity systems. The second issue was the impact of car drivers - either through parking, speeding or just volume of traffic on unsuitable roads, and connected with that most places suffer from a lack of public transport. 

Fran Eilbeck 

Independent 

I was raised and currently live in the ward, and believe our community needs a strong voice to properly represent it. Like many others I am disappointed with the countless broken promises of national political parties who renage on those promises as soon as they get into the Council chamber. It's time for change!
My priorities of elected will be:
A proper and well managed programme of road repairs. Our area is constantly neglected when it comes to this important issue.
I will look to improve our public transport network. I appreciate such a facility needs to be viable, but do think some improvements can be made to allow our villages to be better connected to other areas.
We need to see better provision for health and social care in our rural communities.I pledge to do everything possible to improve financial management and delivery of this essential service.