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  Welcome to this week’s blog - as always, thanks for having a read. There is growing excitement at school about the World Cup and relief for exam students that England’s initial fixtures don’t clash with any of their exams. The A Level and GCSE examinations start to finish soon, but then Years 12 and 10 have mocks whilst the exam desks are still set up. There are high hopes England will top their group and go on to greater success, During the tournament, if you become concerned by anything you witness, you can visit West Sussex County Council's report problems in your area webpage. Here you can report incidents of hate crime or any situation which may cause unrest or raise fear or anxiety in the community.  In addition, the Council’s WORTH Services team is supporting Sussex Police with visits to people identified as being at the highest risk of domestic abuse. Operation Hope involves proactive visits to people to make sure they are safe and to offer safeguarding advice or s...

Welcome to this week’s blog - as always, thanks for having a read. We want to particularly thank all of you who were so positive about Donna being elected Chairman of West Sussex County Council a week ago today on Friday May 22nd. Ali and Ian were there to witness it. My post in the morning with the live stream link was very well received and widely viewed. There were even nice words about how Donna did from people in Arun. If you watched it, you may have seen the former Leader try to throw her a curveball by asking for a vote for the unopposed new Leader so his group could abstain. Having looked at comments on this, I am pleased people thought Donna handled it well. There were no public meetings last week, in part due to half term, but we had casework to progress and that involved some private meetings. On Tuesday, Steve has Chichester District Council’s Standards Committee which includes consideration of a minor change to the wording of one sentence in the constitution and the annual...

  Welcome to this week’s blog - as always, thanks for having a read. If you watched the live stream earlier today you will have seen Donna elected as Chair of West Sussex County Council. Ali and Ian were there in person for what was a historic event. A colleague covered my class for ten minutes at school so I could watch it live. Social media is an interesting thing. Andrew noticed last weekend some unhappiness beyond our District with the final results of the WSCC election outcome because Selsey holds the balance of power: 36 Councillors are needed for a majority; Reform UK and the Liberal Democrats got 23 each, the Conservatives 11, Greens 7 and Labour 5. Reform may have secured the Conservatives support to reach 34 Members but the Liberal Democrats beat them with 35 by securing the support of the Greens and Labour. Donna followed convention and agreed to their forming an administration but will exercise her role independently.  On Monday we delivered Donna’s election expe...

  Welcome to this week’s blog - as always, thanks for having a read. We are still very grateful that Selsey voted to #keepdonna as its County Councillor just over a week ago. Last weekend she was in high demand as the final result left 34 Reform / Conservative Councillors vs 35 Liberal Democrat / Green / Labour ones. The latter grouping is the larger so is most likely to form an administration but either way, Donna is currently the only nominee for Chair. You may want to watch the beginning of the live stream on May 22nd, 2026 to see if she gets elected. This is the County results map: - https://www.westsussex.gov.uk/about-the-council/how-the-council-works/elections/county-council-election/map-of-election-results/   Last weekend Ali and I were number crunching. Ali worked out that 48 of the 70 West Sussex Councillors are new. I worked out Donna’s campaign expenses and analysed data I collected at the count. My tally of the 22% of ballots I caught a glimpse of during the initia...

  Welcome to this week’s blog - as always, thanks for having a read and we hope you enjoyed the Bank holiday weekend. Donna and I were busy campaigning and, as has been the case throughout, met some nice people who greeted us warmly. Thank you to everyone who voted for Donna. Today, Friday May 8th, was the day of the count for the West Sussex County Council electoral divisions in our District. Andrew joined me after the verification to help tally the actual counting of votes. The result was that Selsey voted to #keepdonna which, considering the national context, we find quite humbling. Thank you all once more. This is the County results map: - https://www.westsussex.gov.uk/about-the-council/how-the-council-works/elections/county-council-election/map-of-election-results/   As you can see, at the time of writing, Selsey has returned the only Local Interest / Independent Councillor. Over the last five weeks between us all we have walked nearly a million steps, and prepared and po...

  Welcome to this week’s blog - as always, thanks for having a read and we hope you enjoy the Bank holiday weekend.. We will be campaigning hard over the weekend encouraging people to vote to help Donna get re-elected to represent the Selsey Division of West Sussex County Council this coming Thursday, May 7th 2026. At the last WSCC election turnout in Selsey was only 33% so we are asking everyone to not sit this one out, as your vote has real weight. Quite often when we are campaigning, I bump into one or more of my former students. They have changed somewhat since I taught them over twenty years ago. I am also in touch with some from other places I have taught and discovered this week that one of them is also a teacher now, in a primary school in Bexley.  This is Donna's letter to voters: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FLUxf3cfp3CHM2zF9PQkx4zqygGnyVdH/view?usp=drivesdk   This is our main leaflet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rxA3Os5lBpY6GIZtZwHi13nny8L2KQQr/view?us...