I’m Jenny and I’m one of your King’s Hedges City Councillors, elected in 2021.

I have lived in North Cambridge for many years (first moving here in 1976), latterly with my late husband, former King’s Hedges city councillor and Mayor, Nigel Gawthrope. I have worked in a range of jobs over the years, as a university assistant, as a researcher and in roles for the Kings Fund Institute, Wellcome Institute, and at research institutes in the Netherlands.  I also conducted studies for the EU Dublin Foundation on social exclusion, for the Rowntree Foundation project on family breakdown and family assistance, and moved to the Office for National Statistics finally as the ONS Regional Statistician for the East of England. I served as treasurer for the Cambridge branch of Parkinson’s UK and am a long-term supporter of homelessness charity It Takes A City and the Red Hen Project. I am also a director of a local community benevolent society, Reach Community Solar Farm.

I strongly believe in social values and socialism. We are measured as a society by how we treat each other, support the weakest and create equal opportunities and life chances for all. I am really interested in housing provision, development and related planning issues, and in delivering good quality, sustainable strategies, finance and resource management. I also believe in the need for local authorities to promote and adopt environmentally sound building, energy and environmental solutions.

I am currently the civic Mayor of Cambridge, which is a busy post. Until this year, I sat on the Planning, Joint Planning and Development Control (with S. Cambs), Housing and County Health Scrutiny Committees, representing the City and the issues which King’s Hedges face.  I was a member of the Planning and Transport Strategy Committee, during the development of a new joint local plan and was the Homelessness and Refugee lead in my first year. I am currently on Strategy and Resources Scrutiny dealing with budgets and ex-officio on Civic Affairs.

I fully support our Labour-run City Council’s commitment to building hundreds of new council homes to high sustainability standards has made a real difference to communities like King’s Hedges, where levels of housing need are high. Within the ward. Labour has delivered 75 new flats at Morello Place, 28 are built at Buchan Street including new shops and café and a piazza due to be completed in late 2024 and 14 new Passive certified family Council houses at Sackville and Aragon Close, also due to be completed in late 2024. We continue to work with partners to rapidly house rough-sleepers and other homeless people and to develop future strategies to ensure people do not become homeless and forced back on the street.

Over the last two and a half years, I have undertaken well over 150 local case work issues, covering Council tenancies, housing, crowding, homelessness, repairs, planned maintenance, noise, lighting, anti-social behaviour, temporary CCTV, security, disabled bays, trees and overgrown shrubs, bins, fly-tipping, litter, and planning issues. I have ensured the County take on cases covering social care and health, roads and pavement issues, and regularly liaised with Daniel as our MP so that he can take on complex cases related to national services.

With the cost-of-living crisis, I am keen to work with partners to target those that need our help the most, in the face of increasing living costs for residents and financial stringency across our Councils.

I have relished the chance to meet people in all walks of life across Cambridge, canvassing and as a councillor and Mayor; and to work to make things better for individuals across Cambridge to thrive not just survive.

To that end I have worked tirelessly during my Mayoral year to meet stakeholders, support volunteers and organisations so that they situate themselves in the best way in Cambridge to support our residents, those that need support and to bridge communities across our City: one Cambridge, Fair for all. And I am keen to restand as City Councillor for King’s Hedges to continue that work.