Ex-council director to run in Rowallane area

Ex-council director to run in Rowallane area

20 March 2019

A FORMER Down Council director is to stand as an independent candidate in the Rowallane area at the forthcoming local government election.

In a surprise move announced this week, Mr Martyn Todd — the former local authority’s director of recreation and community services — is to contest one of the five seats up for grabs in Rowallane which are currently held by the DUP, SDLP, UUP and Alliance.

Mr Todd stood as a Westminster candidate for the Alliance Party in South Down at the 2014 parliamentary election and succeeded in tripling the party’s vote across the constituency.

While the Rowallane candidate says he agrees with the great majority of Alliance policies, he has has come to the conclusion that he could focus better on the needs of the Rowallane area as an independent councillor, if elected. 

“I have shown in the past that I can work constructively with councillors of all parties for the greater good,” said Mr Todd who is a key figure in Saintfield and the current chairman of the town’s Development Association.

After studying Engineering at Cambridge University, Mr Todd specialised in engine development at Rolls-Royce Motors in England. He then spent eight years with General Motors in France, the USA and Northern Ireland.  

Following this, he joined a management training consultancy in Belfast, working with small businesses and voluntary organisations before moving to LEDU and Invest NI before. He then joined Down Council’s senior management team.

Well known in the Saintfield area for his voluntary and community work, for the past nine years Mr Todd has been an active member of the Saintfield Development Association.

He was elected the organisation’s chairman on three occasions and is also a Trustee of Saintfield Community Trust, the group that has spearheaded the provision of the town’s new community centre in Saintfield. 

In addition, Mr Todd is a committee member and former chairman of Saintfield Heritage Society and has twice edited the Saintfield Heritage Book of local articles.  

He explained that his interest in local history stems from the fact that his family has been in the Saintfield area since 1640, with his great, great, great grandfather a captain in the 1798 Rebel army at the Battles of Saintfield and Ballynahinch.  

Mr Todd was also instrumental in organising the highly successful recent series of historical talks, ‘Discover Saintfield Community’, that attracted between 100 and 350 attenders to each event.

He continued: “I thoroughly enjoy working with a wide range of volunteers in Saintfield and feel we have, together, achieved a lot for Saintfield in the past ten years. 

“However, I feel that I could do more for Saintfield and the wider Rowallane area if I were elected to Newry, Mourne and Down Council.  From my time as a Director in Down Council, I have a good understanding of how local government works,”  he said.

Mr Todd first made a visible impact in the Rowallane area when he instigated and led the five-year Millennium Project, The Strangford Stone, where 1000 people, the young and young at heart, pulled up the 10metre high, 47 tonne megalith in Delamont Park.

The local government election candidate is a former board member of the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, now Tourism NI and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency.  

He plans to use this experience to help develop tourism related business in Rowallane in a way that sustains the precious landscape and scenery of the area and has also launched a new website, www.rowallanesfuture.com.