Stephen Williams


Stephen's bio:

Stephen has been Parish Councillor since 2011.  He sits on the Parish Planning Committee and is the Council's Trustee for the John Richard's Charity, which was formed in 1846 and provides support for local families in times of need.

He has lived in the village since 1985 and has family connections with Clanfield that span 6 generations.  His interests include photography, researching family history, and being a licensed radio amateur.

He is an accredited Chartered Engineer working for a Civil Service scientific agency and a professional member of both the Institute of Engineering and Technology and the British Computer Society.  His skills which include enterprise IT and cyber security are a valued contribution to the complementary skills provided by his fellow Council members.  His wider electro-mechanical engineering knowledge has also been helpful in providing guidance and advice to the Council.

Notably Stephen provided critical advice during the selection of a suitable service provider for the new Parish Web-site.  His advice was based on a professional assessment of the cyber security underlying the software platform, especially important as both the Council's reputation and the personal information of users could be put at risk by a cyber attack leading to defacement or data loss.  He has also guided the Council to meet its obligations under the GDPR data protection regulations, and has identified and mitigated a significant risk by moving all official Council emails onto a secure UK based service.

Through being a fully qualified first-aider in the workplace he championed the introduction of public accessible defibrillators across the village.  The survive-ability of a patient suffering a cardiac arrest, and the recovery outcome can be significantly improved by having timely access to a defibrillator.  The rural location we enjoy also means that the response times for a paramedic to reach the patient are longer and a defibrillator on-hand would maximise the patient's chance of recovery.

Stephen has campaigned to raise funding and establish partnering to enable Clanfield to become a hot-spot of public access defibrillators. 

Instead of stopping after the Memorial Hall system was installed he has successfully added Peel Park, Clanfield Co-operative Store, and the new Sports and Community building at Windmill View to the system.  No longer are we subject to a post-code lottery where the proximity of the defibrillator dictates the patient's prognosis.  Now that the Bowls Pavillion at St James' Place has come into Parish ownership the campaign is now on to fund another defibrillator there.  It is sobering to think that before these were made available there were two defibrillators known to exist.  Both of these were privately owned and only accessible during times when the organisations were open!

Other members of the team