Dear Wilmington residents (which includes Joydens Wood, Wilmington, Tree Estate, and Maypole), My name is Garry Turner and I am excited to be your Green Party candidate for the upcoming Kent County elections on May 1st 2025.

Full statement

As an international sales and businessperson who works at a Euro 4.5 billion corporation, I am also VP of Business Development for a transformational consultancy, and a proven local community builder.

I understand the world at a macro level, and translate this into what matters to YOU locally. Effective services, safe streets, and close communities.

Having built from zero a thriving community scheme that has over 330 active members, and having volunteered with young people and national charities for over 20 years, bringing people together, strategising ways to improve our local communities, and then implementing solutions, is in my DNA.

We are blessed to live in a relatively safe, connected, and indeed green part of Dartford constituency, but that cannot be assured.

As someone, like you, who likely benefits from the business world and the way that society is set up today, I have come to understand that whilst there IS enough to go around, the concentration of power and resource has reached cancerous levels, as reflected by the number of new billionaires every year (see Forbes billionaire report).

With Labour currently ripping up planning laws, and the Conservative government overseeing 15 years of increasing exponential foodbank usage, from 30,000 parcels per year in 2008-09, to over 3 million parcels per year in 2023/4, whilst our local area is lovely, it is clear that the "the two main parties" are wildly out of touch from those that do the work, and create the value in our communities.

At the same time, the FTSE 100 stock market bobs along at its permanent > 8000 levels, whilst the average worker sees less and less in their pay-pocket at the end of each work day.

Our systems and communities have been, and continue to be, ripped apart after the successive hollowing out of our public services, selling off of our assets, and mass extraction of wealth from those that are earning it, to those that are not.

All the while, we witness an intentional drive to set us against one another by power holders and far-right forces, as a way to mask this mass inequality by design.

This is where we are, but we don't need to stay here.

Positively, we have one of the most outstanding woodlands in Joydens Wood, an incredible community all across Dartford of people that DO care, and it is at this seemingly dark moment in time that WE, the community, get the chance to remember and use our agency for the betterment of all.

We are not powerless.

We are not trapped.

And whilst I wish to represent you at Kent County Council, for as long as a KCC exists after May 1st 2025, I am YOUR representative.

I want YOU and us all to be actively engaged politically in our community.

You have ideas, suggestions, solutions, and creativity that can only add to the richness of the Wilmington and wider Dartford community.

I will listen to you, advocate for you, and be there for you.

I will be honest, truthful, and pragmatic, but also inspire you, work with you, and uplift you.

We already have a number of Green county councillors on Kent Council and I would be honoured to join them as YOUR Kent County council representative.

Finally, I am a BIG proponent of cross-party working. No one party, nor person, can have all the answers.

I'm grateful if you would offer your vote for me on May 1st 2025.