Trevor Roach 

Trevor’s family moved to live in Ruardean Hill back in 1991.

He had been appointed to take over from Brian Cave as the director of The Wilderness Field Study Centre and the Plump Hill Environmental Centre. Over the next 11 years he met the challenge given to him by Gloucestershire Education Department - to transform the environmental centres into self financing cost centres.  This was achieved by ensuring a valued provision of environmental education for all Forest and County schools. This provision was further enhanced when Gloucestershire Youth and Community Service based the Outdoor Education Team at The Wilderness, headed up by my good friend Bob Perkins from Mitcheldean.

Trevor became a governor of Dene Magna School, chairing the Teaching and Learning Committee in the late 1990’s, at a time when the school was improving its reputation, year on year. His wife, Teresa Roach, became head of Maths at the school. Both their sons, Gareth and Tom, went to Ruardean Woodside Primary School and Dene Magna School and became notable team members of Drybrook Rugby Club.

In 2002, he moved jobs to become Head of Education and Science at the National Botanic Garden of Wales, at a time when a failing budget threatened its closure. In his role as a senior manager, he demonstrated his skill at turning around underperforming organisations by helping to secure funding from the Welsh Assembly, which has ensured the survival of this now thriving national institution.

When he learned that the Conservative run County Council had decided, as part of austerity measures, to close the Wilderness and Plump Hill Centres in 2010 and sell-off the buildings and land as vacant property for development, he was persuaded to take on the role of coordinator of a community initiative to fight for the survival of the centres.  He became chairman of a Community Interest Company that was set up with local financial backers, with a viable business plan to run the Wilderness Centre as a not for profit business for community benefit. They failed to win the support of the County Council for their community enterprise, but they did succeed in keeping the centres operating, but as education services in the private sector.

When the Verderer, Maurice Bent passed away in 2021, Trevor was elected to replace him as chairman of the Friends of Pan Tod Beacon and Viewpoint. The friends organised a highly successful Queens Platinum Jubilee Beacon Lighting event on 2nd June 2022, with over 400 local people enjoying the community celebration. The Pan Tod Viewpoint is now managed as a wildlife area, in partnership with Forestry England, with walkers enjoying a landscape brimming with over 80 species of wild flowers.

His great grand parents, on his mother’s side of the family, were Foresters who moved to the Welsh coalfield for work a long time back.  His family has now sunk its roots deep in the Forest once again.

If elected to represent the Mitcheldean, Drybrook and Ruardean Ward he will use all of his skills and experience to ensure that the District Council does all it can to maximise all the opportunities living in the Forest has for providing employment, housing, health and well being for all – and most importantly – doing so in a way that works with our precious environment to secure a viable future for the next generation.

Trevor resigned from the Labour Party in 2022 in order to join the Green Party. He left because he has come to understand that the two party, first past the post system that governs our country is no longer fit for purpose. The ever more rapidly changing climate, along with mass extinction of nature, urgently needs a new political system, with new policies to make the needed changes to secure all our futures. As a person of action, Trevor believes that with your support, we can begin that change by giving the Green Party a majority of seats to run the Forest of Dean District Council – a new beginning for the Forest and a landmark moment for our country.