The Green Party candidate for the Stroud District Council by-election in Severn ward on June 11 is Moya Shannon.
Moya previously stood in the ward during last year’s SDC elections and gained more than half of the number of votes gained by either of the winning candidates. She believes that at her second attempt, with the Greens riding high after the recent County Council elections, she stands a very good chance of winning.
Moya has lived in Stroud district since 1990, mainly in Eastington, where her three children attended local schools.
She worked as an administrator for her family’s long-established oak frame carpentry company. She was previously a teacher, and worked at two local secondary schools over a period of 27 years.
A lover of local heritage and historic buildings, she is involved with helping to raise money for the Eastington Church Roof Appeal. When her children were young, she was actively involved in the playgroup and Parent Teacher Association in Eastington.
If elected, Moya will campaign for small community-based electricity generation schemes and more solar on domestic, commercial and industrial roof spaces, to avoid the need for large-scale solar farms.
She will also campaign for better local transport links and cycle routes. She says: “I will also work to ensure that local developers are held to account, because building houses should be about building homes and not just about making profits. Housing needs to be affordable, sustainable, meet the needs of local people and provide a healthy environment to live in.”
She believes that local farmers need more support in order to provide food security, help them produce food in a more sustainable way and mitigate against the effects of climate change.
She adds: “Severn ward is such a beautiful area and I feel very privileged to live here. I believe strongly that we need to protect the natural environment and way of life and that will be a priority for me if I am elected.”
The by-election was called as the result of the untimely death in April of Cllr Richard Maisey, who had held the seat for Labour since May 2024. Moya says: “Richard was a popular and effective ward councillor and I hope I can prove to be an equally good councillor and be an effective voice for our community.”