Fairwater (Cardiff electoral ward) have included Labour councillor Michael Michael, who was deputy leader of the Cardiff Council until 2008 and Plaid Cymru's Neil McEvoy, who was deputy leader of the council from 2008 to 2012. McEvoy had previously been a Labour Party councillor for the Riverside ward in the city and was also elected as a Plaid Cymru Assembly Member in the Wales Government in 2016. Plaid Cymru ("Fairwater and Pentrebane Voice") and Labour ("Fairwater and Pentrebane Fightback") both issue local campaigning newsletters containing allegations and counter-allegations against one another. These have included accusations that Cllr Michael Michael, a hairdresser, was profiting from
Fairwater, Cardiff and numerous playing fields. Fairwater is the historic name of one of the canons' stalls at nearby Llandaff Cathedral. Fairwater has two secondary schools. The larger of the two, with over a thousand pupils, is the Welsh-medium Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Plasmawr. The other is Cantonian High School, which has nearly 700 pupils. The building in which Plasmawr stands was originally opened in 1959 as Waterhall Secondary Modern School. Pupils at the school included Martyn Woodroffe an Olympic swimming Silver Medalist in 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico. It is on the grounds of old Cantonian lower school, but in recent times