THE ELECTION of a new councillor to Oxfordshire County Council was unfortunately drowned out at the end of last year by a much larger democratic vote taking place only two weeks later.

The newly elected Green councillor for Wallingford on Oxfordshire County Council, Dr Pete Sudbury, took his seat on the authority amid national furore about Brexit, tactical voting, and the future of the NHS.

He is the only Green representative on the county council.

Now, as national politics is settling into a more predictable mould, Dr Sudbury is finding his feet in the arena of local politics.

The newly-elected politician studied at both Cambridge and Oxford University, had a career as a doctor before specialising in psychiatry, and then made a leap into the management and technology behind healthcare.

In his spare time, he has also helped to train several Olympic medal-winning rowers.

But it was the rising tide of concern about climate change which propelled him into local politics following his retirement at 55.

Dr Sudbury, now 57, said: “I never planned to do this, but a colleague of mine in the green party suggested it.”

He added: “I had been following climate change for a long time, since the late 90s, and been increasingly concerned about it and tried to do a lot of stuff to my own house to reduce carbon.”

These steps included being an early adopter of technological solutions for a greener home, including triple glazing, solar powered hot water and electricity, as well as rainwater recycling for his bathroom.

Dr Sudbury also started driving an electric vehicle and 'staycationing' in the UK rather than flying abroad, as well as making changes to his diet: eating very little red meat, growing vegetables and buying local food.

But it was not enough in his eyes.

Dr Sudbury said: “I realised that it wasn’t going to work on its own; you need to change the world as well.”

As concerns about the climate rose, he attended Extinction Rebellion’s two London demonstrations in November 2018 and April 2019.

When Dr Sudbury first saw XR on television, he said he cried as it was a relief to see such widespread direct action on climate change.

He said: “I thought it was an enormous relief when someone was making a noise about the climate.”

He also praised the way the group has moved the national conversation on climate change into the mainstream.

During the demonstrations, he took his young children, his son and two daughters, along to London, to show support to the XR protesters blocking bridges and taking part in other non-violent action.

He added: "We just walked around and met people and waved the XR flag. It was actually really interesting to see demonstrators doing non-violent protests, because both them and the police behaved brilliantly."

As a result of joining the local XR branch, he met South Oxfordshire Green councillor Sue Roberts and then joined the Green Party.

Dr Sudbury said: “I must have said something clever, because during one of those meetings she suggested standing for the council.

“She said it would make a difference, and the Lib Dems agreed to support me by standing aside, and that was it really.”

This collaborative approach between the two parties was instrumental to Dr Sudbury’s win, and he said it should be the way forward for more political decision making in the future.

It was also echoed by a similar pact the two parties agreed in the General Election, along with Plaid Cymru, to stand only one of their Pro-EU parties in marginal seats.

He said: “The chance of either of us winning if we went up against each other was very small against the Conservatives.

“Collaboration is how people work across governments in Europe. I think it is a grown-up way of working, because if we think of what we do in most of our jobs, we find ways of working with people and doing things we couldn’t do alone.”

Dr Sudbury’s career saw him transition from medicine into management and IT systems.

He first studied natural sciences as an undergraduate at Cambridge, but when he finished he decided to pursue a second degree in medicine at Oxford.

On his initial transition from natural sciences to medicine, he said working with people was what motivated him.

He said: “I thought I wanted to be a scientist but I decided that would be quite lonely. I realised perhaps I should do medicine after all.”

The switch to medicine led him to specialise in psychiatry, and he took up a position at Fair Mile Hospital, near Wallingford.

He later worked at Wexham Park hospital, where he made the leap from being a consultant to working in management, and also completed a Master of Business Administration at Oxford Brookes University.

Positions as a medical director in Berkshire and then London followed, before he took a job with Hewlett Packard in 2013 working on plans to create an NHS-wide IT system.

Unfortunately, the plans for the IT system were eventually scrapped by the government due to spiralling costs and complications.

Since he finished that role in 2016, Dr Sudbury has worked as a trustee for the Police Rehabilitation Centre in Goring-on-Thames, consults on the relationship between IT and healthcare, and has volunteered as a lobbyist for Greenpeace.

In his spare time, he is a rower with the Wallingford Rowing Club.

While in university at Cambridge, he took up the sport ‘’by accident’ after a friend suggested he should give it a go.

It was an interest he continued to maintain after his student days, and in 1991 he joined Wallingford's local club.

Through the club, in 1998, he helped to establish a high performance rowing system, which has helped athletes to join Team GB’s rowing efforts.

Among them are Olympic rowers, including his own wife, Helen Casey, who competed for Great Britain in the women’s lightweight double sculls category at Athens in 2004, and Beijing in 2008.

Dr Sudbury said: "People started to join Wallingford because they wanted to get trained to get into Team GB.

"We got four people from Wallingford Rowing Club to Beijing."

He continues to row, and to coach other rowers to an international standard.

According to the doctor, he has clocked up more than 20,000 hours of rowing, and the equivalent of three circumnavigations of the globe.

Regarding his new role, Dr Sudbury thinks it is an exciting time to be involved in politics.

He said: "There is a very strong green streak through the council currently: they talk about the climate and acting on it a lot.

"If you noticed, just before Christmas, Oxfordshire County Council voted down the Expressway road; they said they should build the railway [Oxford to Cambridge line]... but not the road. So that is interesting as you have a Conservative majority council voting not to build a vast new highway."

As the only Green councillor on the authority, he plans to use his influence to encourage more ambitious goals for tackling climate change.

He said: “I think what I will try to do is perhaps accelerate the green agenda, to give them the confidence to say that perhaps we can go forward quicker.”