Sandgate Parish Councillor Susan Claris: July 2025
Five weeks after retiring from Transport Consulting in Arup in March 2023 I became a Parish Councillor for the village of Sandgate on the south coast of Kent, which has a population of just under 5,000.
I have long believed in the benefit that small changes can bring. This has been well described by Sir Dave Brailsford (who became British Cycling’s performance director in 2003) as the ‘aggregation of marginal gains’. Simply put, it’s about improving everything you do by 1%. For me, this means looking at our local environment and seeing where we can make those 1% (or more) improvements.
Sandgate Parish Council is one of over 9,000 parish and town councils in England forming the tier of local government closest to the people. Our Parish Council directly manages the local library, the seafront public conveniences and kiosk, two local parks and two village greens. The council also takes an active part in enhancing other public spaces in the village and is a consultee for planning applications in the village.
There are eleven Parish Councillors, and we all stand as independent candidates, as we believe that political affiliations are not relevant to the local issues we are involved with. I am Chair of the Environment Committee and I am also a member of the Planning Committee, as well as attending full Parish Council meetings.
In the last two years or so, I have had the opportunity to get involved in many things – from being a Community Speedwatch volunteer, to training on carbon literacy, active bystandership and how to use a defibrillator, to becoming a Christmas Elf!
In transport matters, we have helped with the implementation of double yellow lines on a street where cars used to park on the footway forcing people to walk into the road – we undertook informal consultation to make sure that there was support for these. We have provided and installed extra cycle parking in the village. Currently we are working with Kent County Council on the implementation of a 20mph speed limit within the village and installation of pedestrian refuge islands.
We have also set up Sandgate Sprucing Group – volunteers who get out there, tidy things up and do some planting to green our village and make it a better walking environment, amongst other benefits.
The Parish Council is making an application to DEFRA (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) for Sandgate’s beach to be formally designated as a bathing water. If successful, the Environment Agency will hopefully undertake water quality testing at this location. This follows work done by the Council in late 2023 to test the seawater, because of concerns about the accuracy and reliability of the data published by the Environment Agency and Southern Water.
It is easy to be overwhelmed and feel powerless about the many crises facing the world – but I believe that if we all act to improve our communities in whichever way we can, those small local improvements could amount to significant changes.