menu
St George Central is a two-councillor ward.
Abi Finch and Cara Lavan are your local Green councillors, having won their seats in the May 2024 elections.
Cara Lavan was delighted to be elected as Councillor for St George Central in May 2024 alongside Abi Finch. Cara's other Council responsibilities include sitting on the Public Health and Communities Committee, the Police and Crime Panel, the Corporate Parenting Panel and the Health Overview Scrutiny Committee.
More about CaraAbi moved here to be closer to her family 4 years ago and now loves the area. Abi has a background in scientific research with a PhD in Physics. She now works at Share Bristol, a local charity based in Kingswood, offering people a more affordable and eco-friendly alternative to buying new.
More about AbiShort Reel Showing some of Cllr Cara Lavan and Cllr Abi Finch’s 2025 activities
Cara and Abi take great pride in being very active and engaged councillors – so much so, that they often forget to document everything they do. This reel was made at the end of 2025 as a bit of a fun catch up.
May 2026 is the two-year anniversary of the Council’s change to a committee system under a Green-led administration. It’s also two years since we’ve had the privilege to be your local councillors. As Green Council Leader Tony Dyer said when we delivered the 2026/27 budget for the city, we have been “making sure we get the basics right while also investing in Bristol’s future”.
As your local councillors, we’ve been working solidly to understand and meet as many needs as possible.
This year’s budget will invest over £850m into the city; delivering core services for children and adults, providing decent affordable homes, enabling safer and better transport, protecting our environment, looking after our children in care and creating improved educational performance.
Some of our citywide highlights include bringing our council housing stock up to scratch by getting long overdue repairs completed, protecting the library service, investing to explore re-opening public toilets, putting additional funds into dealing with fly tipping, protecting the cultural investment programme, over-seeing the roll out of lamp post EV charging points, shortening waiting times for pedestrians at crossings, opening a youth hub and a new school for children with additional needs.
In 2025 we built more affordable homes than any other city outside London. We are also one of the only Councils in the country to provide a Council Tax Reduction Scheme, which supports those least able to pay their bills.
Under Green leadership, the Council’s planning department has been taken out of special measures and we are investing £300,000 in recruiting more planning enforcement officers to keep developments within the conditions of their planning approval.
We know all of this is important to our residents.
Over the next two years we will invest in improving recycling with better processing facilities and supplying improved recycling containers to households.
There isn’t enough space here to address all the work we’ve been doing, and we do know that there are things that still need work, such as the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood low traffic scheme.
Locally, we’ve held a regular monthly surgery, answered hundreds of emails from residents, reported more potholes and fly tipping hot spots that either of us thought possible and attended community groups and meetings of all descriptions. We are currently also undertaking a ward wide survey on parking.
We are loving getting to know the area and the residents more deeply.
Our May surgery will be on the 13th, 2:30-4pm at the Meadow Vale Community Centre small hall and the two new local PCSO’s for the area, Chloe and April will attend to hold a joint surgery with us. So if you have any queries or concerns about crime in our area, do please come along.