Mark Michael Wright

http://www.libdems.org.uk/mark_wright

Mark Wright
Bristol South

Dr Mark Wright is the Liberal Democrat candidate for Bristol South at the 2015 General Election. He contested the seat at the 2010 election, helping the Lib Dems in Bristol South to their best ever result and turning the formerly "safe" Labour seat into a "marginal".

Mark was born in Southmead Hospital in 1974 and grew up in Hartcliffe. He obtained a first-class degree in chemistry from Bristol University and then a prizewinning PhD in astrophysics. Dr Wright is a computer programmer and lives in Windmill Hill with his wife, Lena.

Mark has been a councillor since May 2005, and was re-elected in 2009 and again in 2013. In the city council’s last Lib Dem administration, he was the Cabinet member for Housing, Service Improvement and IT from 2009-2010 - responsible for a budget of over £100 million. From 2010-2011 he was the Cabinet Member for Efficiency and Value for Money, and IT.

In his housing role he initiated the first council house building programme in Bristol for nearly 30 years and launched a drive to get empty homes in the city back into use. Under his IT remit he also tightened the rules to limit council "snooping" on residents, launched a drive within the council to use more Open Source software, and took that support of Open Source software right to the top of government. He was also a School Governor at St George's School on Brandon Hill for 6 years and helped save that school, and his childhood school of St Pius X in Withywood, from closure.

Having grown up in the constituency and now being actively involved with regeneration issues in Bristol via the Council, Mark is ideally placed to take up the cause of releasing the potential of Bristol South - large parts of which have been left behind for decades while other parts of Bristol have prospered.