![Reading Festival has laid out its Look Out For The Planet pledge ahead of its return next week, bringing measures set to promote sustainability. Picture: Luke Dyson [LukeDyson.com]](https://wokingham.today/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Img1871502-360x180.jpg)
A former UK trade commissioner has been selected to stand as the Liberal Democrat candidate for Bracknell at the next general election.
Jo Hawley, who served as the UK’s Deputy Trade Commissioner for Europe and as consul-general in China, will stand for election in the Bracknell constituency.
She is a Warfield resident and a Warfield parish councillor for St Michaels Ward, and has spent more than a decade persuading international companies to invest in the UK during a twenty-five-year career as a civil servant.
Asked why she was standing, councillor Hawley said it was because the town she lives in had lost the economic model that once made it succeed, and so was struggling with the problems that followed.
Bracknell was designated a new town in 1949 and grew on good-value serviced land, motorway access and proximity to Heathrow, attracting Honeywell, 3M, Sony, Panasonic, Hewlett Packard, Dell, Fujitsu and
the Met Office.
The Met Office relocated to Exeter in 2003, HP closed its Bracknell head offices in 2018, and Dell shut its EMEA headquarters in 2022. Dell House is now set to be demolished and replaced with warehousing.
Of the 40 large employers based in the borough in 2016, a quarter had gone by 2023.
“A building that housed a global technology headquarters is becoming distribution sheds.
“Residents can see that, and when they say something has gone wrong here they are right.
“I spent over a decade working with international companies deciding where in the world to put their money.
“I know what they ask, and I know how quickly a place gets crossed off a list. Bracknell hasn’t been unlucky. It’s just not adapted to the changing market.
“That’s a fixable problem.”
Her four goals are to pick two or three sectors where the borough has a genuine advantage, secure a named research or teaching institution, stop losing employment land to warehousing, and give major investors support, including speed and certainty in planning.
Earlier in her career, Cllr Hawley worked at the delivery end of government services, setting strategic direction for schools innovation and youth services at the Department for Education.
