GIVEN the strong performance of the Green Party across the country it would be easy for its local representatives to fool themselves that people in Craven who voted for them backed every jot and comma of Green Party policy.

That, of course, just isn’t true. Many of the 395 people who voted Green in Ribblesdale told us that they did so for one prime reason.

They were horrified by the lack of respect for the wonderful local environment by the existing authorities.

Two years have gone by since the Hellifield flashes were trashed and yet not a single one of the responsible bodies took any effective action to stop the damage or to ensure it was repaired in any meaningful way. At the same time too much housing development has gone up across the area that fails to meet local needs and astonishingly fails to meet modern expectations of low energy bills and low carbon emissions.

No wonder hundreds of people were willing to vote Green in a seat where we had not previously stood. Thank you to all those voters and to the many more who were thinking about doing so but voted for other parties because of a first past the post electoral system.

Councillor Andy Brown (Green Party)

Cononley