Shepway Green Party has selected Dr Marianne Brett, Head of Environment & Sustainability at an engineering consultancy, as its General Election candidate for Folkestone & Hythe.
Marianne, who lives in Folkestone indulges her love of gardening on her allotment as well as swimming in the sea and enjoying the countryside on her bicycle.
She leads the sustainability and environmental work at structural, civil and geotechnical engineering company Walsh, which monitors the carbon footprint of every building design it takes on to meet demanding standards and drive progress towards the UK’s 2050 Net Zero target. She studied Earth Sciences at Durham University and gained her PhD studying climate change of the past at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Says Marianne, who is active in Shepway Green Party as its membership officer, “We have won more seats than ever before in local elections this year, at town, district and county councils, and are now demonstrating just what Greens can achieve as we run Hythe Town Council and Folkestone & Hythe District Council. I am honoured to have been selected as our candidate so that local people can vote Green again, in even greater numbers, at the next General Election.
“I am passionate about tackling the climate emergency, biodiversity loss and pollution, which other parties are not taking nearly seriously enough, and there are so many other issues affecting local people, including the cost of living crisis and our crumbling public services. The General Election cannot come soon enough: people are desperate for change and the Green Party are the only ones who will represent local people instead of putting party interests first.”
Shepway Green Party’s record number of councillors comprises twelve at Hythe Town Council, eleven at Folkestone & Hythe District Council and, following its substantial victory in March’s Kent County Council by-election, one county councillor.
The May local elections saw the Green Party become the majority group on Hythe Town Council, with no Conservatives elected, and the largest group on Folkestone & Hythe District Council, with the Conservatives, who had run the council for 16 years, reduced to five councillors. Controlling the council with two LibDems, the Greens moved quickly to cancel the deeply unpopular and uneconomic Princes Parade seafront development at Hythe.