VOTE Matthew Jeal

I’ve lived in Chatteris for 10 years now. I brought my first home here, I got married in St Peters and St Paul’s church, my children were born at Hinchingbrooke Hospital and brought home to Chatteris. To say it’s a town I care about is an understatement.

Chatteris is a mostly quiet but close-knit community of people who, on the face of it, don’t expect much. Most of the people I talk to have the same complaints, yet nothing is being done to address them. The people make their voice heard to the local government and are mostly ignored. People need someone willing to listen to them, to empathise with them and to make the right choices for the benefit of this town.

We need to make Chatteris better, not just bigger. Building housing is incredibly important but so is investing in the services that support our community. We’ve almost lost complete access to bus services and our health services are overstretched.

The age-old jokes about the amount of pot holes just aren’t funny anymore. And the constant increases in council tax rates just add insult to injury, especially when much of it is going to policing while trust in our local police services is so low. That we’re one of the lowest areas for education spending in the entire country is shameful, especially when the wonderful education staff in our town do such a fantastic job. 

The public made it very clear how much we care about our local wildlife, and yet housing developments still threaten particular areas of biodiversity, while the Council maligns those who campaign to do something about it.

I’m running for Fenland District Council because I understand what residents are experiencing as I’m experiencing it myself. I want the people of our town to have a voice and, together, make Chatteris a place to be proud of.

We need a community-run bank so that people don’t have to rely on the big corporate banks in other towns that were so willing to abandon us. We need good access to public transportation so that we can get to work, go shopping or enjoy ourselves, and so that our children can get to school or go out with their friends. Chatteris shouldn’t be a place where you have to own your own car just to live.

We need sustainable, affordable housing so that families can grow and thrive, not so that property developers can see a return on investment or landlords can have someone else pay off their mortgage.

We need green energy initiatives in our community so we can break our dependency on energy providers who see record profits, whilst we see our energy bills skyrocket.

I’m running for the Breakthrough Party because it’s clear that we need a real alternative to the status quo.