My wife and I moved to Finchampstead over 9 years ago from neighbouring Camberley.

Full statement

We love the area, especially the green spaces, leisure facilities and the new Wokingham town centre.

I am a self-employed IT consultant and I have served as a councillor for Finchampstead North for the past 2 years.

Wokingham Borough is often voted one of the top places in the country to live and this attracts more and more people who want to live here. We need to protect the village from development and maintain the facilities for local residents. More houses will put pressure on the doctors, schools and roads.

As soon as I was elected as a councillor, I raised concerns over the proposed redevelopment of the California crossroads. I thought that the scheme was over complicated, expensive (£5.5m), would negatively impact the businesses during construction and provide no improvement to traffic flow or safety.

I submitted a petition signed by over 700 local residents to the council asking them to rethink the scheme. The Lib Dem executive member for highways ignored this plea and has pushed ahead against the wishes of local people.

More recently, I called for the council to compensate local businesses due to the impact the works are having on their income, but again the Lib Dem council have turned down this request.

I will work with the other Finchampstead councillors to fight against over development and to preserve the character of the village.

There has been an application to build a 60 bed care home on Lower Wokingham Road and along with residents I fought against this application. The planning committee rejected the application but the company has submitted an appeal, which we are also fighting against.

I believe that Finchampstead and the Wokingham area is a great place to live, raise a family and do business but this is under threat from the current Lib Dem council.