Richard King becomes Kent County Chairman
21 May 2012
Richard
King has been elected as Chairman of Kent County Council.
Mr King, who is championing young people and volunteers during
his chairmanship, will be the ceremonial representative of the
council for the next 12 months and will chair County Council
meetings.
He was elected to Kent County Council in May 1997 as the
Conservative member for Ashford Rural West. A retired broadcasting
executive, Richard spent 20 years with the Independent Broadcasting
Authority responsible for the South East from 1981 to 1993. He was
a director of both the Kent and Maidstone Chambers of Commerce, and
chaired the Maidstone Enterprise Agency and the Maidstone Business
Point. He has had other experiences in business management, haulage
and public transport industry, travel and estate agency.
Mr King said:
“There will be two themes to my chairmanship. One is trying to
encourage more young people into proper employment or training
after they leave school. There are opportunities available and I
intend to champion these. The other is to promote voluntary work in
the county. We need our volunteers – they do a very important job,
supplementing all the work that other organisations do, and we need
more of them.”
Richard has nominated two charities that work to protect Kent’s
environment – CPRE (Campaign for the Protection of Rural England)
Kent and the Kent Wildlife Trust. He will be raising funds for both
organisations this year and awareness of them.
Eric
Hotson, who represents Maidstone Rural South, was elected as
Vice Chairman of the Council.
Outgoing Chairman Paulina Stockell has fond memories of the past
12 months. She said: “It has been a busy but enormously enjoyable
year. I have met so many people and visited a huge number of
organisations and charities that are doing massively good work
across Kent, for Kent. I will take away many memories. There have
been several royal visits which are always a highlight – having The
Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh in Kent is always a massive honour
for us.”