Five years ago, standing for election was the last thing on my mind.

Full statement

Now having been a member of Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council and Kent County Council my councillor roles take up most of my time In 2016 I became aware of just how unrepresentative our Conservative administrations at Tonbridge and Malling and Kent County Council had become. The two councils had become one-party-states and hardly anyone knew who represented them or what was happening at their Kings Hill and Maidstone HQs.

I had just joined the Green Party and helped found the Barden Residents Association having witnessed some appalling arrogance by TMBC Councillors at a planning meeting.

Like most people I was pretty much in the dark about local politics. Slowly I began to realise that key landmarks in my childhood were being lined up for sale and destruction, the Teen and Twenty Club where I went to playschool, River Lawn where I played as a very young child and even the fields around the Carp and Tench Pond where my Dad taught me to fish as a child at Lower Haysden Lane were apparently going to become a housing estate and possibly the fields at Grange Farm which later became my Higham Wood playground when my family move to North Tonbridge.

Every time I looked further into these cases I was more worried, the picture emerged of a Conservative Party machine which was happy to sell its property at a rock bottom price to developers because it was itself haemorrhaging money and being starved of funding in equal measure but didn’t have the foresight to develop the land itself and realise greater returns.

When I contrasted what was happening in Tonbridge with what other councils were doing to increase their property holdings in order to bring in revenue and replace those lost by Government cuts, I became very concerned. My Council was doing the opposite, in fact it sold a key building for almost half its market value and now we have the evidence that the same has happened at River Lawn where the building they sold for £1.5m has been sold on for £3.45m.

I have been a borough councillor since 2019 and I am active in Judd and across Tonbridge in his role as a County Councillor too. I have campaigned to save open spaces like River Lawn and protect the Green Belt around Tonbridge from unsuitable development.

My main focus is protecting services and ensuring we have a sustainable council both financially and environmentally. I am very concerned that our town should provide more facilities for younger people and improving safety in our community through my membership of the Kent and Medway Police and Crime Panel.

https://www.tmgreens.org/councillors-and-candidates/judd-ward/mark-hood/