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GRAHAM WEBB
TOWNSTAL COUNCILLOR AND MAYOR
He enjoys getting tattoos, goes mountain biking, plays football and listens to the Clash – not your traditional town mayor! Graham Webb was voted in as a Townstal councillor and then mayor nearly six months ago. He says his main priority is to “change the face of the town council” so it becomes more open and engaging and making sure the people of Townstal are never alienated again. By day Graham is a gardener and his interview with Steph Woolvin took place in a shady courtyard high above the town…
“O
ne of my first jobs was a window cleaner, but I couldn’t write ‘Confessions of a Window Cleaner’ as I really didn’t get to see much at
all! In fact I saw more sights when I was a milkman - barn owls, badgers, beautiful sunrises and people washing their cars at three in the morning!” Graham Webb has certainly tried a few career paths over the years; he also had a stint as a photographer. “I stopped that soon after I got back from a big wedding in London and realised one of my camera rolls hadn’t wound on! It was fine in the end, I salvaged some pictures from the previous film and the happy couple were none the wiser!” But now the 52-year- old ‘Dartmouth boy’ has decided to settle as a gardener and get more involved in town politics. He joined the Dartmouth Initiative Group (DIG) earlier this year. The group, made up of local people with a broad range of backgrounds and skills, wanted to shake things up in a positive way, hoping to get members elected onto Dartmouth Town Council. They put 16 candidates into the May elections, 11 made it through. Graham says now they have power they aren’t intending to cause conflict, in fact they’re working well with other members of the council on the common goal of doing what is best for the whole town, and for the first time, putting Townstal at the forefront of political matters. Graham is a councillor for the Townstal ward and says in his time in office, both as a councillor and mayor, if the only thing he achieves is to bridge the gap slightly between Dartmouth and Townstal he’ll be happy. “I was born at the top of town and know that there has always been the ‘divide’ where Dartmouth is considered the posh part getting all the resources and attention and Townstal
is somewhat ignored. The issues up there are not consid- ered as important as the historic tourist hotspot at the bottom, and people are told things will change but they never do.” He wants to start addressing the issue straight away and has already dealt with concerns over the state of the Longcross cemetery. “People complained about the area becoming over grown so I immediately organised for a Town Council team to go in and tidy it. That kind of thing does not need to go through a committee! If we can just take more immediate action on issues like this, it will mean a lot.” Graham has had to learn about policies and procedures.
He says it’s all a bit more involved than he realised! “There are quite a few committees and stages to go through for things like planning applications. I know a lot of issues like parking, youth activities and health care are complex without a short-term fix. I just want to make sure the council is always active in pushing decisions forward and telling everyone what’s happen- ing. There’s been a long history of mistrust, with communities feeling decisions are made behind closed doors, so I think we need to get better at communicating on all kinds of platforms including social media.” Graham says being mayor doesn’t give him
any extra power over council decisions, but he can use his status to put pressure on high-
er authorities. The role allows him to chair meetings and carry out ceremonial duties and he says it’s an important job: “In many ways the mayor is the face of Dartmouth and the ‘pomp’ is all part of the job. We are an historic town and it’s expected that a mayor with his or her chains will appear at important ceremonies such as the opening of Regatta, the naming of a new lifeboat or a BRNC passing
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