West Dorset Liberal Democrats have selected Bridport based Dorset county, district and town councillor Ros Kayes to fight the seat for the party in the General Election of 2015.

In 2010, Coun Kayes stood as Lib Dem candidate in the South Dorset constituency, coming third in the poll which saw Conservative Richard Drax take the seat and Labour candidate Jim Knight in second place.

With a career background in secondary education and mental health, she says she is “committed to working hard nationally to steer the party's role in government towards protecting the vulnerable and delivering social justice in welfare reform, housing, health and education and training.”

“No-one can be under any illusion that fighting the 2015 election is going to be easy for either of the parties of government”, said Coun Kayes.

“But by far the bigger issue is that people are so distrustful of politics and politicians in general that they are crying out for MPs who are not career politicians.

“The best MPs grow out of their constituencies, and are not parachuted in by national parties. We need people who will represent their communities and stand up and speak out when there's something that's clearly wrong as well as supporting their constituents by not always toeing the party line when that's clearly the right thing to do .”

Coun Kayes was instrumental in setting up the Spirit of Bridport Festival of Culture and Business Forum, Skills Training Bridport, a training social enterprise of which she is a director, as well as the Bridport Community Land Trust.

“We have an advantage in that Ros lives in the area and is well known within West Dorset for protecting services valued by the community,” said Janet Page, Liberal Democrat Constituency Chairman, “West Dorset is sixteenth in the list of winnable seats from the Conservatives nationally and we feel that Ros will prove to be a good candidate for us.”

The sitting West Dorset MP is Conservative Oliver Letwin.