SHADOW Environment Minister Sue Hayman visited Watchet on Saturday as part of West Somerset Labour Party’s manifesto launch for the local elections on May 2.

With local party chairman and vice-chairman Cllrs Maureen Smith and Peter Murphy, she was shown Watchet’s new visitors’ centre and refurbished boat museum – as an example of partnership working between town and district councils – and the community-based social enterprise, the Onion Collective. 

Naomi Griffith, from the Onion Collective, met the delegation to discuss plans to develop Watchet East Quay and to regenerate the area following the closure of the paper mill in 2015.

Mrs Hayman was accompanied by Libby Lisgo, chairman of Taunton Labour Party.

Due to the merger of councils next month, the West Somerset and Taunton branches are running a joint campaign for the new Somerset West and Taunton Council.

Cllr Smith said that issues including the risk to food standards, animal welfare and climate change were not being adequately addressed by national government.

She said that in West Somerset, local people were taking these issues – like plastic pollution – into their own hands, but stronger action was needed, which she believed would come with a change of local and national government.