The Mayor of Stockport for 2024/25

I feel extremely honoured to have been chosen by my fellow councillors to be Stockport’s First Citizen and am delighted that my daughters, Melanie and Abigail will share the role of mayoress.

I was born, the elder of 2 girls, in a small industrial town on the banks of the River Mersey. Unusually both my parents worked. My mother, having been denied secondary education because she was a girl, was particularly delighted when I passed the eleven plus to attend the local girls’ grammar school and then went on to Leicester University to study maths and psychology. All I really remember of my time there was sailing and playing tiddlywinks competitively; a particular highlight being beating a team from Cambridge University.

Because my future husband arrived in Leicester a year after me, I extended my time there by doing a graduate certificate in education and teaching Maths in a local secondary school. After marrying and having 2 daughters, I continued teaching, eventually in an American ex-pat school in Waterloo, Belgium. That was an experience like no other! The arrival of my son, Alexander, interrupted my teaching and I enjoyed the rest of my time in Belgium immersed in the joys that Brussels international community offered.

My return to the UK saw me installed, finally, here in Stockport. I’ve now lived in Bramhall for more than 40 years and feel almost a real Stopfordian. After almost 10 years in Belgium, I couldn’t wait to throw myself into community activities. I became a school governor and served for 20 years in a secondary school and then for 11 years at a primary school. I started a Friends Group for Bramhall Park which continues to this day and has gone from strength to strength. Following the death of a friend I decided to take up her mantle and offered myself as a volunteer at the nearest Citizens Advice Bureau.

Over the next 20 years, during which I became the manager of Marple CAB, I saw the harrowing side of life that some residents of Stockport endure. I’d already been persuaded to stand as a Liberal Democrat candidate, in the local elections. So, when in 1996 I was successfully elected, I knew that Stockport Council was my route to helping to make a difference.

I live in an affluent area and I represent an affluent area, but there are large parts of Stockport that do not share that affluence, where money is short and life is hard. So I have decided that my charity for 2024/25 will be Stockport Food Network, an amalgam of Stockport’s food banks that does so much more than just hand out food parcels.