Our County Council has responsibilities for Education, Public Safety & Community, Environment, Social Care & Support, Leisure & Culture, Transport, and Local Democracy. Green Party Councillors will listen to local people and refer to our Party's core principles in our work for the local community:

- Education. Greens believe in fully funding a diverse public education system that is free from private finance initiatives, having much smaller class sizes, and scrapping university tuition fees. Schools & nurseries must be available to all within reach of home.

- Free School Meals. At a time when the health of our children is cause for mounting concern, we want our kids to know what good food is and at least once a day, sit down to a proper balanced meal. So the Green Party would provide a free lunch in all state schools in England and Wales every school day, to every pupil.

- Affordable Homes. The single biggest financial hurdle for many of us in this country is the cost of getting a roof over our heads. Quickly followed by keeping it there. The Green Party will use tough planning rules to make sure developers include truly affordable housing, for rent not just one-off sales, in all new developments.

- Public Safety and Community. A just society has to be nurtured as well as safeguarded by the law. Green policies on crime prevention focus on tackling the underlying social conditions that lead to crime. We will campaign to revitalise our communities, reduce urban sprawl onto greenbelt land, reduce pesticide use on farmland and monitor phone mast installations.

- Green Energy for all. Solar water heaters will typically save you 40 pounds a year. And the average solar electricity installation can save up to 200 pounds on your annual electricity bill. Never mind the CO2 you'll save which is likely to be well over 1 tonne. That's why we want to give as many people the chance to make their own renewable energy.

- Environment. Greens will tackle the serious problem of environmental damage by making it easier to recycle and compost household waste and help you reduce your waste. We will instigate energy saving measures, invest in public transport, and promote renewable energy sources.

- Free Insulation. We're proposing free insulation for every home that needs it. Carbon emissions from homes were a staggering 21% of total emissions in the UK in 2005 and this programme alone can cut that by 25%. We've done the sums, looked at the timescale and we know it can be achieved within five years.

- Social Care and Support. The Green Party believes we need to bring back the service ethos to our public services and is determined that Northamptonshire should have properly funded, publicly run care, free at the point of use for all. Also NHS resources should be increased for regular health checks and health education.

- Leisure and Culture. Our country parks, county heritage sites and leisure centres need promotion and looking after, not threats of closure. Libraries and the arts require more support and funding.

- A living wage. The minimum wage is really a poverty wage. Every calculation shows that a real Living Wage - what we really need to provide for ourselves and our families - is at least a pound an hour higher. Greens have won a Living Wage for workers around the country, and now we want more people to benefit.

- Transport. Our transport systems have been built to solve the wrong problem. Successive governments have tried to deal with the increasing demand for mobility by spending billions of pounds on transport plans that give us more of the same - more roads, wider motorways, more runways. Real progress on transport requires us to tackle the root causes of demand for mobility. Greens will aim to reduce traffic congestion, local pollution and improve road safety by ensuring that investment schemes prioritise pedestrians, cyclists, bus and rail travel.

- Safer Streets. More than half the people unlucky enough to be hit by a car doing a seemingly harmless 35mph, die. We happen to think that people on foot and on bicycles have just as much right to feel safe on the streets where they live as car users, so we'll introduce a 20 mph limit in residential urban areas, including villages.

- Local Democracy. Being able to act locally on issues that affect you directly is key to Green ideas on democracy. Greens will fight to make Northamptonshire County Council more accountable to local people. Nationally, we will campaign for a fully elected Upper House of Parliament and to resist the introduction of ID cards.