Under the trees

The Somerset Conference of Trees is being held on June 12th in Hornblotton — the village I grew up in, where my Dad lived until he died in 2016, and which sits within my Councillor division of Mendip South. This division is the landscape of my formative years.

After the local elections in 2027, Mendip South will cease to exist as a division. It was created as part of the newly formed Somerset Council — a unitary authority that brought together Somerset’s district councils and county council into a single body, with 110 councillors across 55 divisions.

My ward colleague and I were elected in 2022 in anticipation of that new council coming into being, becoming Mendip South’s first councillors. When the boundaries are redrawn ahead of 2027 local elections in Somerset, the division will be split three ways, absorbed into neighbouring divisions and disappearing as an identity entirely — meaning we will also have been its last. In its entire existence, no other councillors will have represented it.

My Dad was at one with nature. Trees were my Dad. He worked as a supervisor on one of the Youth Training Schemes (YTS), where he taught young people about forestry maintenance — and he loved every moment of it. He believed deeply in what those schemes offered: practical skills, purpose, and a path forward for young people who were looking to recover from difficulties or simply find their place in the world. Dad lost the job he loved under Margaret Thatcher’s government, it was rebranded, restructured and transitioned into simply “Youth Training” by 1989/1990, gradually losing the identity and purpose that had made it work. And ever since, training schemes of this kind have been treated as a political football — full of ideas, but never entirely with the consistency and commitment needed to achieve the results young people deserve.

He used to say that after he passed, he would be under the trees. And often, when I look at those trees, I find myself visualising exactly that — him there, beneath them, at peace.

If he were alive today, I know I would have bought him a ticket to the conference of trees, and we would have gone together.

I am proud to be the Councillor for Mendip South — a division that is my memory lane, written into the landscape I have loved all my life.

To a book a place at The Somerset Conference of Trees, click here.