Almost none of the Hyde Park Councillor candidates actually live in Hyde Park

They don’t even go here


You’d expect the people wanting to represent us on the council would know a lot about Hyde Park. At the very least you’d hope that they live here. 

But it turns out just one of this year’s candidates does.

This week saw LUU host its first “What’s My Vote Worth” event in the run up to the Local Elections on May 5th. The session gave students the opportunity to ask their candidates about the things that really matter to them.

Unsurprisingly the turnout was low and if you take into account journalists, staff and the LUU Exec then you’d probably find that the grand number of students in attendance was zero.

The most surprising revelation of the day came when they were asked “What makes them suitable to represent Hyde Park and Woodhouse and do they live in the ward?” The response from all candidates was resounding ‘No’ except for Conservative Candidate Connie Campbell, a Leeds University Student and Hockey team player, who lives on Hyde Park Road.

All the candidates seemed reassuring that living in the ward ‘isn’t necessary’ to represent people effectively, but when you have a full time job and council duties how often are these people actually experiencing the day to day difficulties that residents of Hyde Park do?

It would seem that if you want student representation on the council, and for your representative to live in your ward then your only option in this election is to vote Conservative. Or not.