Bruce McKenzie-Boyle – your Conservative Candidate in Crowthorne
A resident of Crowthorne for 23 years with my family, two of my sons being educated at Edgbarrow, and with over 40 years’ experience in Sales & Marketing, I now run my own Management Consultancy, helping small companies to win business and grow, create new jobs and drive innovation.
I am the elected Customers’ Representative on the Management Board of an International Hotels & Resorts Group and have been Chairman of a regional Patients’ Support Charity. I have also been a National Assessor for the UK Excellence in Customer Experience Awards for some years. As a consequence, the importance of service satisfaction and how to deliver it underpins everything that I do.
Understanding your needs, offering solutions, and delivering on promises are the qualities that I will bring to the Council, should I be elected.
Whether you call Crowthorne a village or a town, whether you believe that Crowthorne and Wokingham Without should stand as distinct entities or merge into one, the key fact is that we are a single Community and should continue to preserve what is good and develop and improve where we can.
If you stand outside the Crowthorne Library you will see, embedded in the pavement in brass, the words “Community at the Heart of Crowthorne”, words that I submitted to win the competition as the most appropriate motto for Crowthorne when the Library and village square was opened.
I am passionate about the importance of the Community and am a strong advocate of the individual’s responsibility to make a contribution to the community. I also believe strongly that those decisions that affect people’s lives should be taken at local level, involving the very people who understand the facts and the consequences of any decisions, i.e. us, the residents.
With a total commitment to Crowthorne, I am fully involved and am doing everything I can to focus on those issues that will maintain and improve the quality and richness of life in our vibrant Crowthorne community. I have been active in attending meetings with the developers of the TRL site and have pressed them hard for assurances that the impact on local traffic would be taken into consideration and have received their personal commitment that they will spend £16m on road improvements around the site, particularly at the 7 key junctions, to address this issue.
I have attended Parish Council meetings and regularly challenge both the Borough Councillors and the Parish Councillors on a variety of issues. I also regularly meet with and exchange views and experiences with our representatives from Europe, recently meeting our MEP’s Richard Ashworth and Daniel Hannan; Central Government, particularly our local MP, Dr Phillip Lee, but also asking key questions of Theresa May, the Home Secretary, and Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, when the opportunity has arisen; and Borough wide, having a good working relationship with the Leader and most of the Borough Councillors, sharing with them the challenges facing Crowthorne residents.
If elected I will focus on the following areas of the Community:
Planning
I will press for any proposals for development in Crowthorne to be appropriate, proportionate and sustainable; and that the associated infra-structure enhancements be viable, affordable and will happen. This is particularly important in light of the proposed TRL and Broadmoor developments. As a resident, I share your concerns and your strong desire that our village identity and quality of life should not be destroyed by over-development. For these reasons I have attended public meetings and challenged the developers on key issues.
Policing
I will work to maintain an active role with the Police, working with the PCSOs and the Neighbourhood Action Group, encouraging Community participation through initiatives such as Speed Watch.
Schools & Youth
I will work to forge closer links with Schools, including Extended Schools activities, and encourage more applicants to access the Crowthorne Education Charity to further the aspirations of young people.
Business
I will use all my experience in Business to enhance our links with the Crowthorne Businessmen’s Association, Crowthorne Traders’ Association & the Market Traders and promote more village community events to increase commerce.
Governance
I will work tirelessly to Improve Crowthorne’s links with the Wokingham Without Parish and Wokingham Borough Councils to share and enhance the focus on Crowthorne-wide issues, and maintain our close ties with Bracknell Forest Council and their policy making, to ensure local needs in Crowthorne are addressed. As I said before, village or town, Crowthorne or Wokingham Without, it is still one Community.
My opposition candidates talk a lot about what they will do. I am already doing it.
· I am engaged with the Parish Council, while neither of my opponents has been seen at a Parish Council meeting or taken the opportunity to ask any difficult questions.
· I am attending meetings with the developers at TRL and asking questions about the important issues. Have they?
Incidentally, the Labour candidate while bemoaning the fact that the High Street is suffering from the economic downturn and that there is a shortage of housing for young people, in the same paragraph opposes the development of new housing on the derelict and ugly TRL site, which is largely laid to concrete, with a number of empty, and future derelict, 1970’s concrete buildings.
Surely, if this development goes ahead, but I must stress, with the appropriate safeguards and infrastructure in place, it could provide the housing that our children require, and the increase in residents could also bring a much needed shot in the arm to Crowthorne High Street.
· I regularly meet with Borough Councillors and our MP and MEP’s and repeatedly stress the important issues in Crowthorne.
· I don’t spread misinformation. The Lib Dem candidate claims that I went to a Public School and that apparently would be bad for Crowthorne. Neither of these assertions is true. Coming from a working class background, I won a scholarship to an independent charity school, which gave me a deep seated belief in honesty, integrity and fairness, values that I exercise in every aspect of my life.
· He also says that if I were to join my wife on the council that would be bad for the community. Ask anyone, including the Lib Dem candidate himself (who is a fair man), about the exceptional work that my wife, Cllr Tina McKenzie-Boyle, has done for the community of Crowthorne over the years that she has been on the Council. Have you visited the Crowthorne Station recently and seen the improvements she has engendered by working closely with First Great Western Railways and the local schools to enhance the feeling of civic pride that the station now presents to all who arrive by train. I’m sure you will share the view that my joining and working with her can only be good for Crowthorne. I am very proud of what my wife has achieved for the residents of Crowthorne, and I wish to work with her to do even more.
Please exercise your Vote in most effective way and Vote for me.