Email: Chris.Willmore@southglos.gov.uk
Facebook: Focus on Sodbury, Yate and Dodington
Chris co-founded the Focus Team with her husband Mike Drew. She has a long record of bringing people together as volunteers to do things in Yate. Chris was a teenager when first got involved in environmental work and has kept going, most recently helping set up the Friends of the Upper Frome and doing regular river quality monitoring as a volunteer. She also organised a community take over of local allotments that were due to be sold to a property management company. As a lawyer, she specialised in environmental and planning law, and uses that background to help local groups, whether as a volunteer representing residents at inquiries, tackling developers or helping them sort out problems. People turn to her for help when there’s a tricky situation, because they know how she uses her legal background – to help find practical solutions.
Working with other volunteers she developed the Yate Local National Action Plan, and has worked with residents, the Council, wildlife groups and landowners to implement it.
She has been particularly involved in working with young people to help them develop their own projects – from being the chair of the project to fund and open the Armadillo Youth facility in Yate, or being a trustee of a student union, to leading a project supporting young people to take part in sustainability/climate projects which won national and international awards.
Over the years, she has chaired a range of projects raising money and bringing new facilities for the town, from the Heritage Centre, to the Town Council group that saved Yate Outdoor Sports Complex (YOSC), handed the running to a local charity and then raised millions to do it up. In addition to being a South Gloucestershire councillor, she is currently a town councillor for North Yate, and in the past has been Lib Dem leader on South Gloucestershire Council. She runs a popular local facebook page for the Focus Team and is a charity trustee.
Her focus on the Council will be on sorting out the planning problems we face – and their consequences for our town, and making sure the Council takes practical action on climate change.
The Liberal Democrat and Labour partnership which runs South Gloucestershire council presented the new draft local plan at Cabinet on November 13th. The plan sets out the housing needs for the district over the next 15 years.
South Gloucestershire Liberal Democrats have announced a victory after extending the 622 bus service for the next academic year, which serves students attending Castle School in Thornbury.
On Wednesday 24th May, Councillor Claire Young was formally confirmed as the new Leader of South Glos Council, following the Local Council Election results earlier this month which saw the Liberal Democrats increase its number of Councillors to 20.
Liberal Democrat bus campaigners are celebrating victory in their campaign for a cheap fare for bus journeys within the towns of Yate and Thornbury. From later this month people travelling on First Bus services will play just £1.50 for any single journey
