Viva Lewes Issue #156 September 2019

BITS AND BOBS
BEST FOOT FORWARD
We thought our Footprint
issue was the perfect
moment to ask a few
questions of the Lewes
District Council new and
first Green leader Zoe
Nicholson, who heads the
cooperative alliance.
Zoe, you’re leading
a council made up of
an alliance of Greens,
Lib Dems, Labour and
independents. This has recently taken over
after eight years of a Conservative District
Council. How long is your term? Four years.
We’re rotating leadership between Greens and
the Lib Dems, so my personal term as leader
is 12 months and then my Lib Dem colleague,
James MacCleary (also pictured), who’s currently
Deputy becomes Leader.
What are your three top hopes for that
time? Can I have four please? Making sure our
Council takes every action it can to address the
impact on our communities of climate change;
it’s real, it’s happening now.
Building truly affordable and high quality
sustainable homes that bring work, services and
things we need to our communities.
Being creative with the resources we have to
deliver meaningful sustainable prosperity for our
communities, especially those hit hard by the
economic times and by planning policies of the
past, like Newhaven.
That politics can be done differently, fairly and
justly. That by working together we can create
solutions that are better than those we could
dream up on our own.
What are the biggest challenges?
The biggest challenge is the context in which
our Council operates, where we have a national
government that is hell bent on taking us off a
Photo by Carlotta Luke
Brexit cliff, national policies
of austerity that have meant
that Councils like ours have
to deliver essential services
with very little support
from government and on
top of that a set of national
planning policies that do not
make it essential that all new
developments have net zero
carbon emissions. Despite
all that, the challenge is to
deliver what matters to local people first time,
and create a sustainable, vibrant community and
places to live and work.
These are interesting times. How do you
remain motivated when central, indeed
international, government can seem to
be moving in such different directions? I
suppose finding the motivation doesn’t feel like
a choice, it’s an intrinsic sense of opportunity
and doing the right thing. I have a strong
sense of purpose and being in service to others.
Greens come with a deep sense of community
and purpose and I guess I’m built in that way.
These are unprecedented times, with people
waking up to the realities of climate change,
the years of austerity. It’s time to be creative,
courageous. To put our best selves to work for
the common good.
What do you personally prioritise to
minimise your footprint? Every spare waking
moment, after being a mum, partner, councillor,
chief executive, leader of a council, I spend
getting more Greens elected. I’m all about the
policies. Whilst I can and do do my part, any
amount of recycling, flight reduction, travelling
by train pales into insignificance compared
to the impact of the policies of national, local
government and big business.
Interview by Charlotte Gann
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