Peter Garbutt

Peter Garbutt is 59 years old and married and. He is currently the Chair of Sheffield Green Party and Party spokesperson on Energy and Climate Change.

Peter is a secondary school teacher and he taught at Westfield School from 2008 to 2010.

Sheffield council and budget cuts

While Labour and the Lib Dems on Sheffield Council fight each other over small differences our city suffers. Green Councillors have offered real alternatives for residents eg :

• Opposition to the Highways PFI on the grounds of it’s huge, rising cost.
• Help for local people most affected by the proposed change to fortnightly bin collections.

Green councillors fought to stop the cuts from government unfairly affecting the most vulnerable. Our council budget for 2012/13 tried to cut backroom functions and the wages of top executives.

We wanted to :

• support frontline services like Citizen’s Advice and the Youth Service
• support children, elderly and disabled people
• raise standards in private-rented housing
• stop cuts to teams fighting anti-social behaviour

But we were voted down by Labour and the Lib Dems

More About Peter

I was brought up in a Labour-supporting household. My first political memory is Harold Wilson’s first 1963 win against Douglas-Home, but it wasn’t until 1981 that I first became active, joining the nascent SDP. I became the first convenor for the Bradford party, and stood as it’s first candidate in a by-election in March 1982. I came third, just 100 votes behind the winner. I was shortlisted as a parliamentary candidate in Wakefield in the 1983 General Election, and I stood twice in Pudsey as an Alliance candidate for Leeds City Council.

After moving to Sheffield, in 1988 I became disillusioned with Libdem politics, and left the party. It was John Major’s 1993 exhortation to his party to get “back to basics” which led me to start a long process of research and formulation of the basics of governance.
This remains an ongoing project, but by 2005 I felt I had enough confidence in my beliefs to start becoming involved in politics again. I was delighted to find the Green Party held a very similar outlook, and even some of the same policies as myself.

Late in 2008 I put myself forward to fill a vacancy on the Eurolist, a position which was eventually filled by Steve Barnard. In the course of 2009 I have worked hard, writing letters to the press, leafletting, and canvassing, both in Central and in the Norwich North by-election.

My main concern – though by no means my only one - is climate change; I am a member of FoE, SCACC, Greenpeace, 10:10. As well as going on several marches, we have fully insulated our house, and we have started growing much of our own food.