The Mayor's Office

The Mayor

Cllr Ben Stokes - Mayor of Swale 2011 - 12

Councillor Ben Stokes is Swale Borough Council’s Councillor for Iwade and Lower Halstow. He has been a Swale Borough Councillor for the last seven years and has previously served for 16 years as a Parish Councillor in Leysdown, including a term as its Chairman.

Councillor Stokes was born in Ealing, Middlesex in 1934 and moved to Leysdown, on the Isle of Sheppey, in the 1960s from Colwyn Bay in North Wales when he relocated his amusement arcade business to Leysdown.

He was a founder member of the Leysdown Traders Association and served on the Leysdown Carnival Committee, and ran his business from Leysdown for 45 years.

Aside from being a Councillor, he was Chairman of Kemsley Village Hall Committee and has served on outside bodies for the NHS and the Kent Rural Community Council.  He has also served as a school governor in Iwade and is currently a governor at Lower Halstow Primary School.

He is also a member of the Showmen’s Guild, which is the negotiating body for travelling showmen and aims to protect the interests of travelling showmen who gain their livelihoods by attending funfairs.

The Mayor’s charities for the coming year are:-

• Macmillan Cancer Care;
• Kent Air Ambulance;
• Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI)

The Deputy Mayor

Cllr George Bobbin

George Bobbin started work as a butcher at the age of 15 and became a Master Butcher in 1966, aged 26. He also married his wife Mary in 1966 and they were happily married for 44 years.

In 1978, the family moved to Boughton to run the butcher's shop and in 1983 George’s customers talked him into standing for the Parish Council, to which he was duly elected.

George and Mary had three sons, all of whom were educated locally in the village and in Faversham.

In 2002, George was elected to Swale Borough Council, on which he has faithfully served his constituents ever since.

The Mayoralty

Those members of our Council who are elected to the post of Mayor are proud of its traditions and zealous to preserve its privileges which have been acquired through many years.

The Mayor - "the Head and Chief Governor of the Town" - had for long been recognised as being, in his or her own Borough, second only to Royalty and the Queen's Deputy, the Lord Lieutenant, a status which continues to be recognised in the Borough and District Council by Section 3(4) of the Local Government Act 1972. This high standing at the present time is mainly one of honour and dignity rather than actual legal powers, a distinct contrast to the days before the Municipal Corporation Act 1835, when the Mayor was often virtually and legally a dictator within his own Borough.