AS OF last year I became one of the new councillors on the Andover Town Council.

With the new council year approaching I’d just like to say what a true pleasure it is to work as a volunteer councillor with my colleagues and the officers.

All of us councillors have different political flags of allegiance, and some have none. It’s great that we all agreed to put aside our political differences, Red, Green, Yellow, even Blue.

After a large group from the Blue team quit the council last year a new group was taken on to the council and since then we have been doing our up-most for the betterment of Andover.

We are doing what we see as our civic duty.

Each of us brings a unique set of everyday life experiences to the council which is replacing precursors, coming from business, science, engineering, even young mums; the list goes on.

In a short time this new council has helped developed a whole series of changes for the new council year which I am personally very excited about, and you’ll hear a lot about these activities in the near future I’m sure.

I feel a few from the Blue team have sought through the pages of this paper to highlight the activities of our Andover Town Council in a ‘bad light’.

Indeed, I would argue they have distorted our actions through the prism of the old politics of us and them.

They continue in a style of politics that people these days appear to hate.

They have sought to sow the seeds of division and failed as we remain a good team.

We operate within the council without the complications of the old politics.

Because of this our door is always open to them.

Richard Rowles, Andover Liberal Democrats Chair, Andover Town Councillor