(Wotton, North Nibley & Stinchcombe)
Catherine Braun
Catherine Braun has been on Stroud District Council since 2016 and is hoping to be re-elected for a third term.
Catherine is an active ward councillor, and regularly attends the parish council meetings in Stinchcombe and North Nibley, as well as the town council meetings in her home town of Wotton-under-Edge.
She has also been Council Leader since July 2022, and chair of the council’s Strategy & Resources Committee. This role involves heading up the cooperative cross-party alliance that has run the council for more than a decade and frequently acting as a spokesperson for the council.
Catherine has lived in Stroud District since 2008 with her husband and children. She loves the area for its great sense of community, vibrant voluntary sector, and the beautiful countryside, where she enjoys going for walks with her dog.
Among her activities as a ward councillor has been supporting the Wotton, Charfield & Kingswood Greenway Project, which aims to create a safe walking and cycling route between the three local communities to link with the new station in Charfield. If she is re-elected, one of Catherine’s priorities would be to work with other Greenway Group members to bring the project to fruition.
She is also a member of the Wotton Area Climate Action Network and enjoys being part of the trustee team at The Keepers Community Hub, which runs a busy weekly programme of activities and drop-in sessions, to connect and support local people.
Catherine would love to see a fairer and greener district and is keen to support more home insulation projects, to help residents save money, reduce the climate impact of heating, and to create new green jobs.
She is involved with Stroud District Together with Refugees and the Make Votes Matter campaign, which lobbies for a fairer voting system where all votes count.
Gareth Kitchen
Gareth is well known in Wotton-under-Edge as the owner of Cookability. This job brings him into daily contact with the community and keeps him connected and informed about local issues.
He served on Wotton Town Council for three years in the early 2000s and feels that he can draw on that experience in the role of district councillor.
“I want our community and high street to embrace the changes that will be needed as the world moves to ‘net zero’ and I feel that I can help shape that future,” he says.
He would particularly like to encourage the council to publish more data about the economic health of the district’s towns. “Getting this data into the hands of local residents, businesses and entrepreneurs means that they could identify and take advantage of new opportunities. This simple, cost-effective change would nurture new localised economic growth, possibly in novel and unexpected ways.”
Originally from rural south Wales, Gareth moved to Wotton in 2001 and was later attracted to Stroud because of what he calls its “notoriety as a hotbed of political activism”. He is an active volunteer with Stroud Against Racism, and has been involved with scrutiny at Gloucestershire Constabulary, where he has excellent working relationships with senior officers.
“I’m well known for, and comfortable about, holding authority to account with quite dogged determination,” he says.
He is a strong supporter of proportional representation in elections, because the present system favours the main parties. “It’s just not right that Gloucestershire’s six MPs are all Conservative and white – and will quite probably be all male after the general election.”
He believes that much more decision-making power needs to be devolved down to the local level from Westminster, and is a supporter of Yes Cymru, the campaign for an independent Wales.
He joined the Green Party because of its ethos advocating an economy rooted in sustainability and pursuit of social progress rather than economic growth above all else.
Before moving into retail, Gareth worked in IT and still enjoys working with computers. He is an advocate of open-sourced software, believing it offers users more privacy. “Many of the societal problems we see today are rooted in business practices of tax avoiding American internet conglomerates and their intrusive surveillance advertising practices.” he says.
His hobbies include cooking and DIY. He is a long time Forest Green Rovers supporter and both his children were FGR ambassadors.
Wotton has 3 seats
Wotton has 3 seats, so in addition to Catherine and Gareth, you are also able to vote for to the fantastic Eleanor Meehan!