22/04/13…..Meet your prospective County Councillors

WITH the county council elections due on May 2, 2013, there are nine candidates for Thame & Chinnor seat. In the first of a series biographies of the local candidates, the first is of Mary Stiles, who is currently a Thame Town Councillor.

Mary has lived in Thame for 45 years and before retirement worked in education with the community in Thame, Chinnor and the surrounding villages for several years and so she knows the division well. She is a trustee of four local charities, a school governing body Chair and Chair of the local Children?s Centre advisory group, as well as being a town councillor in Thame and a director of the local partnership, 21st Century Thame, which includes the surrounding villages.

She is active in, and supported by, the Co-operative movement and currently is working hard as a town councillor to investigate the possibility of co-operative housing schemes, which can provide genuinely affordable homes for local people. Having worked with young people for much of her working life, Mary was appalled when the Thame Youth Centre closed in 2011 and the qualified youth worker was made redundant. Having secured a one-off grant from Thame Town Council, she is now delighted that the Youth Caf