“You can sometimes make unpopular decisions”

What Steven asked Simon Curry, Medway Council portfolio holder for climate change and strategic regeneration

Simon Curry was first elected to Medway Council in 2019 as a member of the Labour Group. Following the 2023 local elections, in which he was returned as a councillor for Luton, Simon became a prominent member of the Labour administration cabinet, taking on the portfolio for climate change and strategic regeneration. Steven met him at the St George’s Centre, where they discussed ecology, where to visit in the urban areas of Medway and, of course, the Local Plan.

Cllr Simon Curry

What is your official occupation?
I'm semi-retired now. I have been working for the last 25 years on environmental management as a consultant primarily. Environmental management is my field, ecology is my specialty.

What additional roles, paid or unpaid, do you have?
Outside of being a councillor, nothing.

Do you sit on any school boards or trusts or anything like that?
I'm on various things, so Arches Local, I'm involved with that. Up until recently, I was very involved with Luton Primary. It's in my ward. They're now part of the Rivermead Inclusive Trust.

Why Luton ward?
That's a really good question. I didn't set out to become a councillor until later in life. I worked at Capstone Farm Country Park. That's my first job in Medway. Moved there in ‘87 as the Senior Ranger. I worked there for about ten years. I lived in Luton, it became my home. Living in Luton and working down the road at the country park was lovely. It was brilliant. It was a really nice life. Then, obviously, settled here properly in Medway. Moved on from working for the old Rochester City Council as a Country Park Ranger to running the Parks and Landscape section for the whole council before Medway was formed. But then went into private work after it was formed. So why Luton? Because I love Luton. I think it's a fabulous place. When the opportunity came to be a councillor there, I said, ‘I'll give it a go.’

How would you explain your cabinet role?
It's a pretty broad brush. Obviously, there's only ten of us on the cabinet, and there's 150 official services. Amongst the roles that I cover, the climate change agenda is one of the big ones that I'm dealing with, but the other areas under my strategic regeneration hat are public transport, frontline services and probably most importantly, planning and the Local Plan. I've got a whole range and a few additional add-ons you have to take on in that role. I do emergency planning, for example. I think I've got something to do with community centres and stuff like that. Within the range of roles, between the ten of us, we have to take on quite a mixture. My top roles are climate, frontline services, and waste management. Those are the three big areas that I work on.

In that first year of the council, as an observer, it felt like, and you can tell me if this is fair or not, if someone had some good news, it was one of the other councillors going forward. If someone had to share bad news, it seemed to be your role to come out.
(laughs) Not really. I think some of the areas I was dealing with were controversial anyway. A good example would be the public transport issue and the highways management. I don't actually do the highways. Within the reshuffle, that's gone to Alex (Paterson) now. I did it for just over a year. He took on all the public safety, policing side of things, and the highways management. It seemed sensible to give him that as well. I was doing the highway stuff, and that was potholes, red routes, yellow boxes. All the stuff that was controversial. But at the heart of that is really important issues around health and the economy and the environment, and in order to drive those things forward, you can sometimes make unpopular decisions.