The Liberal Democrats have selected Bath and North East Somerset councillor Dine Romero as their election candidate for the new North East Somerset and Hanham (NESH) constituency.
Launching Dine Romero’s campaign | Photo courtesy of B&NES Liberal Democrats / Clive Dellard
In the local elections in May last year, the Lib Dems romped home in North East Somerset, inflicting a bruising defeat upon the Conservatives.
Of the councillors in the wards within NESH (the constituency has wards from both B&NES and South Gloucestershire councils), 12 are Lib Dem and nine are Conservative. Labour and the Green Party have four and one councillor respectively.
Dine Romero is the current Mayor of Bath and represents the Southdown ward.
She has been a B&NES councillor since 2003. In her time in office, she has served in a number of roles and led the local authority through the pandemic.
Most recently, as chair of the council’s children, adults, health and wellbeing policy development and scrutiny panel, she has launched an initiative to explore how B&NES Council and other bodies can do more to tackle knife crime among young people – an issue that has come to the fore after a number of recent and tragic incidents in Bath and Bristol.
In addition to tackling knife crime and anti-social behaviour, Dine Romero says her priorities are improved access to NHS and social care services; tackling the cost of living crisis; and campaigning for better local buses, and getting services that have been cut or reduced running again.
She said: “I’m thrilled to be selected as the Lib Dem candidate for the North East Somerset and Hanham constituency. I want to build on recent Lib Dem successes in the area.
“For over 20 years I’ve been a voice for local people at the B&NES Council – and now I have an opportunity to be a voice for us in Parliament.”
Meanwhile, the Labour Party has yet to announce its candidate for the NESH constituency, for which Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has been selected as the Conservative candidate. He has represented the current North East Somerset seat since 2010.
In a leaked internal party document, Labour reportedly described the constituency as one of its “non-battleground” seats.
The new constituency will be radically different to the current North East Somerset seat. Only half of the existing area will be in the new constituency, with Bathavon North moving over to the Bath constituency and Radstock and Midsomer Norton joining the new Frome and East Somerset constituency.
The ‘Hanham’ part also includes the South Gloucestershire wards of Longwell Green, Bitton and Oldland, and Parkwall and Warmley.
They are currently in the Kingswood Parliamentary constituency which disappears at the next General Election but was won at last month’s by-election by Labour’s Damien Egan.
This story originally appeared in The Week In, our sister title.
