Third Green leaves East Herts Council group after code of conduct and planning rows
A Green Party councillor on East Herts Council has quit the group and will now sit as an independent.
Cllr David Woollcombe, who was elected in 2023 to represent Buntingford, said that he would sit as an ‘Independent Green’ following his resignation.
In 2017, he was the party’s choice to contest the Hertford and Stortford constituency in the General Election. He came fourth behind Conservative Mark Prisk, who held the seat, Labour’s Katherine Chibah and Liberal Democrat Mark Argent.
It is understood that issues around the party’s handling of decisions on the Neale Drive junction and the warding of Buntingford Town Council are behind Cllr Woollcombe’s decision.
Divisions between him and the Green leadership on those topics came to light in a standards decision and at public meetings in recent months.
Last December, Cllr Woollcombe was found to have broken the council’s code of conduct with a “personal attack” on party colleague Cllr Vicky Glover-Ward, the authority’s executive member for planning and growth.
He had suggested to colleagues in an email that Cllr Glover-Ward was “wrong and ill-advised” and claimed she seemed “intent on doing [residents] real harm” during a row about proposed changes to a road junction on Neale Drive.
Then, at a full council meeting in July, Cllr Woollcombe voted against plans – backed by the authority’s Green and Liberal Democrat leadership – to split Buntingford Town Council into wards. He described the proposals at the time as “another slap in the face to the people of Buntingford”.
He has also suggested he believes he did not receive sufficient support from the party as a councillor and that whipping took place “in all but name”.
Unlike other parties, the Greens do not have whips, with the idea that councillors and MPs can vote according to their consciences.
After his resignation, Cllr Woollcombe told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “There does seem to me to be a mismatch between their desire to be elected as responsible representatives of the constituents of Buntingford and their ability to do so.
“Hopefully, they will learn from the experience of me discontinuing my membership of their party. I wish the party well and good luck in their future elections.”
The Green leader of the district council, Cllr Ben Crystall, said: “I want to thank Cllr Woollcombe for his service as a Green councillor and wish him all the best as an independent.”
Cllr Woollcombe’s seat is next up for re-election in 2027. He is the third Green to leave the group since 2023.
East Herts Council is now made up of 16 Green, 14 Conservative, 10 Liberal Democrat, 5 Labour, 3 Independent and 2 Reform UK councillors.