April 27, 2021 3.33 pm This story is over 35 months old

Local elections 2021: Candidates offer a green alternative for Lincoln and Lincolnshire

Environmentally friendly leadership
Green Party candidate Matt Parr. | Photo: Supplied

The Green party is hoping to provide an environmentally-friendly alternative in the 2021 local elections on May 6.

The party has 20 candidates running at county level (just under a third of seats) and 11 in the city of Lincoln (all wards up for elections covered).

Lincolnshire’s current party leaders have already spoken about how they will tackle some of the main issues emerging in the county. Read the feature here.

Candidates will, of course, be joining others in trying to provide that “other option,” including new parties such as the Heritage Party and young independent candidates.

Green candidate Matthew Parr, who is standing in Lincoln’s Hartsholme ward, said his fellow runners had been building up steam in the past few years.

He said they wanted to take hold of the larger opportunities the county elections offer, including tackling infrastructure projects like major highways or even fracking projects in Biscathorpe.

“The Lincolnshire Wolds are amazing landscapes, really quite special for this area, but the Biscathorpe development threatens the River Bain – a protected chalk stream.

“I find it a little bit disheartening that we’ve declared a climate emergency, yet at the same time we’re looking at developing unsustainable fossil fuels through fracking, which isn’t exactly the safest way.”

The party’s key policies include ensuring homes are in the right place and away from flood plains, along with making sure they have energy efficient facilities such as solar panels.

They also want more wildflower habitats to promote the creation of oxygen, including potentially using grass verges around the city instead of mowing them.

Matthew would also like to see more green infrastructure on top of that, with enhanced footpath and cycleway improvements.

He said there had been some “amazing lessons” from the COVID-19 lockdown, including how people had used open spaces for exercise, and how nature and the environment had returned to urban areas without people in them.

“The amount of people I connected with who said this has been a lifesaver for them, it’s really helped lift their mood to get out to walk around Swanholme or Hartsholme and without that green space, they’re not sure they could have made it through.

“There’s definitely some lessons to be had from that we actually really like our green spaces, and they provide such an amazing service for us, for our well being, during awful dark times.

“We need to we need to realise what that environment did for us and protect it.”

Follow all our Local & PCC Elections 2021 coverage