City Council unveils all-female leadership team

A Liberal Democrat councillor has become the new leader of Milton Keynes City Council after it became the largest party in the local elections.

Jane Carr has taken over from Labour's Pete Marland, who stood down earlier this month after 12 years.

Carr said: "It wasn't on my agenda, but life puts you into these situations and the public have voted in a particular way that means you have to step up and do the job."

With no party winning enough seats for full control, Labour and the Lib Dems will again form an alliance to run the authority, with Labour's first female group leader Lauren Townsend appointed as her deputy.

Carr grew up in a single-parent household with her mother and grandparents in a Nottinghamshire village, before moving to Grantham, the birthplace of Margaret Thatcher, when she was eight.

She came to Milton Keynes in 2003 and finished third for the Lib Dems in the 2005 General Election under the mentorship of former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

She is a social worker who has served as a councillor in Newport Pagnell for eight years and said: "We settled here and realised this was home.

"The city was just wonderful for my girls when they were growing up and my grandchildren have also lived here."

She is the first female leader of the authority since Isobel McCall in 2009, and said her main challenge would be "maintaining a budget that means we can deliver services, but we want to look at more creative ways of managing the sort of housing mix we've got too".

She added: "We are really keen to get the mental health strategy up and running to offer a way through the mental health maze, to get help to people that need it and of course, the cost of living is very important."

It is not unusual for two parties to be responsible for running Milton Keynes. In fact, in the last two decades there have only been two years where that hasn't happened, and that was from 2024-26 when Labour had enough councillors for full control.

However, the party lost 11 seats on 7 May, leaving the Lib Dems as largest party for the first time since 2010.

The cabinet will be made up of councillors from both groups, and seven of them are women, including Townsend who already has two years of experience as deputy when her party ran the authority.

Born and raised in the city, she went to school there too, but got into politics via the trade union movement while training to be a teacher.

To fund her studies, she worked at a local restaurant but rallied her colleagues into strike action over pay, which led to her involvement in the local Labour Party and she was elected as a councillor in 2019.

She said: "I was cabinet member when we oversaw the introduction of the wheeled bins, which was marmite for the people of Milton Keynes, but has paid dividends as we are now the number one city in the country for recycling."

Although she is now in opposition, she has just become the first ever female group leader of the Labour Party in the city.

"I do not believe that locally we are as tribal as they are at a national level and genuinely most people from all political persuasions stand for local government because they want to make a difference to their neighbours and communities."

She echoed her leader's thoughts that the cost of living was still an issue.

"When inflation and wage bills go up, and the cost of materials and contracts go up, that goes up for the council as well.

"So services are more expensive than they've ever been, and we do not have adequate finances, so have to work very, very carefully and cleverly to make sure we balance the budget every year."

Both Carr and Townsend's appointments were confirmed at the council's annual general meeting, where its 22 new councillors were sworn in.

It was also the first chance for Reform UK's nine new councillors to appear in the chambers, with group leader Steve Swain speaking for the first time.

In the new-look authority, the Conservatives will have 12 councillors, meaning there are four parties at the discussion table for the first time since 2014.

Carr said: "There will be arguments and debates and different policies we won't be able to agree on, but the fact is we should listen and hear what they've got to say because scrutiny is important."

She added: "No leader can work on their own and you do have to have constructive criticisms and that's what we want."

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