Having grown up in the Canterbury area and helped raise a family here, Henry has a great understanding of local people and the issues affecting them Henry lives with his wife, Sarah, and three young children in a small village near Canterbury where he has lived since he was six years old.

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His children attend the same village primary school that he attended.

A former pupil of the Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys in Canterbury, Henry went on to train as a teacher at Canterbury Christ Church University and later studied Computer Science at the University of Kent. He has been a member of the Green Party since 2014 and this will be his second general election standing as the Green candidate.

“I have always wanted to work in ways that will help people—that is why I was a teacher for 16 years—being their MP would give me the opportunity to really help local people,” says Henry, who is actively involved in his local community.

“The Green Party is the only party that offers a complete and credible vision of a fairer and greener country.

“Most people I talk to tell me they just want the Canterbury area to be a pleasant place to live and work in—with good housing, good quality transport, green spaces, decent healthcare and good schools.”

Living within a tight-knit community in the countryside, Henry is passionate about the natural environment and supporting rural communities.

He commented: “People in our rural districts are just not served by the local Council, nor our current government. We have lost our mobile libraries, local post offices and pubs. Our schools and GP surgeries are oversubscribed and the bus network is being cut back.”

“I have lived in the same Kent village, just a few kilometres outside Canterbury city centre, almost all my life and I get frustrated when I see this silent minority being let down year after year.”

Henry helped local Green Party activists fight back against the unacceptable levels of sewage pollution in the area. Local Greens raised their own funding and carried out a citizen-science water-quality testing programme, to prove the scale of the pollution from Southern Water.

“We need to grab the bull by the horns and have a massive overhaul of how we manage sewage and wastewater treatment in the District and across the UK,” he says.

“We can’t keep building more and more luxury housing estates on green fields and not invest in infrastructure—it’s not sensible and it’s not sustainable.”