Results of Questionnaires to Candidates in May 6th 2021 local elections in Sudbury
Just after the nominated candidates were announced for the Suffolk County Council election to be held on 6th May 2020 we contacted the four main parties and as many independent candidates as possible to ask them to complete an online questionnaire on Cycling and Active Travel in Suffolk.
The idea was sparked from the success of a similar initiative from the Cambridge Cycling Campaign which has done this for every election for more than five years.
We received 46 responses out of 258 candidates which, while quite a low response rate was to be expected given we had never done this before and had little time to follow up. Some parties were quite difficult to engage with. That is reflected in the responses
We will repeat the exercise for future elections and we hope candidates will better engage in the process.
For the record the number of responses by Party was:
The Conservative Party 4
The Labour Party 13
The Green Party 19
Liberal Democrats 3
Independents 7
We supplied a link to a page of information on the subjects of this questionnaire in case they were previously unaware of this.
We also sent links for Police and Crime Commissioner candidates but received no responses.
We tried to do the same for the other candidates in District, Parish and Town Council elections. However only 9 Green Councillors responded. Their responses are detailed at the end of this document
The results are interesting, the support for investment in cycling and Active Travel seems to be fairly strong, which will hopefully means, if elected, the supporting candidates will support planning and investment in Cycling Infrastructure in Suffolk.
Click on the link below to see the summary details of the responses.