Fifth contender enters the race to become Mansfield's next mayor

Julie Tasker, aged 62, is standing as an Independent because she and her team were unable to get the Liberation, Opportunity, Vitality and Empowerment Party registered with the Electoral Commission in time, because there were “too many hoops to jump through”.

She said: “I want to make a difference in a positive way to get strength back to the community, to help people realise the power that they’ve got, including through things like common law, and stop all this building on green spaces.”

Ms Tasker, who has two adult children and two grandchildren, works as a complimentary therapist. She is a former Shitasu Society director and has served as vice-president of the Federation of Holistic Therapists.

She will be on the ballot paper as Julie Tasker-Love-Birks to recognise the LOVE Party and her previous marital name Birks.

As Mrs Birks, she led the parents group at St Peter’s CE School in Mansfield and was a parent-governor at the town’s High Oakham Middle School and Brunts Secondary School.

She did teacher training at Wynndale Primary in Mansfield and Chesterfield’s Ashover Primary School and taught at Mansfield’s St Patrick’s Primary, Jeffries Primary in Kirkby, St Edmunds Primary in Mansfield Woodhouse and various schools as a supply teacher, before moving on to West Nottinghamshire College to teach City & Guilds.

Her name will be well known to Mansfield residents from the campaign to save Berry Hill Park, which included her setting up the Facebook group for the cause that within four days had yielded a protest group of about 400 people.

She said: “We really need to cut the red tape and reinvigorate the town centres.

“I also want to get people to realise that we could get affordable electricity by using waterflow, like the mills used to do, and I want to get more allotments and get more people growing their own food and get people talking to each other in proper neighbourhoods again.

"It’s about getting out to people and finding out what they genuinely need.

Ms Tasker is the fifth confirmed candidate for the election on Thursday, May 4, alongside sitting mayor Andy Abrahams (Labour), Coun Andre Camilleri (Conservative), Coun Mick Barton (Mansfield Independents) and Karen Seymour (TUSC).