FOREST of Dean District Council leader Tim Gwilliam says he will not be standing for re-election at the next election in May.

The Berry Hill ward councillor says he has been thinking about standing own for some time – but the recent disagreements with Green councillors which led to their expulsion from Cabinet was the final straw.

He  heads the minority Progressive Independents administration  and has led the council since 2017.

““I’ve told the Cabinet and all of my group I don’t intend standing in May,” he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

“(Deputy leader) “Paul Hiett and some of my other colleagues have been quite vociferous in trying to get me to change my mind.”

Cllr Gwilliam unexpectedly became leader five years ago after an extraordinary series of events.

He says the district council was facing huge financial pressures when he took over and he thought at the time it would be closed down within two years.

“I truly believe the cabinet, since we have taken over the administration, has turned around a council which was dying.”

The Cabinet has split over the question of the Local Plan, the development blueprint for the district over the next 20 years.

The “second preferred option” is now out for consultation after the original – for housing to be concentrated in a new village – was abandoned after a backlash.

But the Green group – including the two members who were in the Cabinet – is still publicly backing the new settlement idea.

Cllr Gwilliam recently removed Cllr Chris McFarling from the climate change brief and Cllr Sid Phelps from environment for not sticking to Cabinet policy.

He said he “felt a bit of a failure” for not getting the Greens “to leave politics at the door”.

He added: ““For the Greens that have been in the Cabinet since day one, now to think they don’t need to follow that, I feel I’ve failed.

“I also feel I’ve kind of lost my own ward a little bit. I’ve had to take a step back. If I’ve lost that lot and I can’t convince the Greens, it’s time to let someone else have a crack.”

Cllr Gwilliam was first elected to the district council in 2013 for Labour.

An extraordinary sequence of events put him in the leader’s office four years later.

It started in April 2017 when Cllr Gwilliam and three others left the Labour Party to form what was then Forest First.

Three months later, there was a successful vote of no confidence in then Conservative leader of the council, Cllr Patrick Molyneux.

The Tories declined to put anyone forward to replace and the Labour group said it was forbidden by party rules to form a minority administration.

That left the four councillors of Forest First to run the council – and only 13 of the then 48 members of the council voted for him to become leader.

He said: “It’s not easy when you are never in a majority group.

“We’ve always been a minority and we’ve had to bring people along with us.”

Although the number of councillors was reduced from 48 to 38, they are now split into eight different groups.

The Progressive Independents and Greens have seven councillors, the Conservatives have six, the Independents and the Independent Alliance have five members each, there are three Labour councillors, and the Liberal Democrats and Independent Group Two have two councillors each.

Voters go to the polls on Thursday, May to elect the new council.