Sharon Carr-Brown for Bournemouth West

Biography

I was born in Ringwood in 1970 and moved to Bournemouth a decade later. My parents owned a series of small businesses and as a result I have lived all over the Bournemouth West constituency – Westbourne, Talbot Woods, Town Centre and Wallisdown.

In 1984 I joined Bournemouth School for Girls, where I started an Amnesty International group in the sixth form. I’m told it’s still going strong. I left in 1989 to go to Durham University to read Chinese, French and Japanese. The year I spent studying and travelling in China and later working in Japan was one of the most important in my life. Somehow I managed to leave Durham with a 2:1 and a fiancé, Jonathon.

After university I started work in the Chinese section of the BBC World Service. I immediately joined the BECTU trade union, later acting as a union rep and taking part in tough pay negotiations and the campaign to save the World Service in 1996.

1997 was a breakthrough year for the Party and for my career at the BBC. I spent a couple of weeks working in Millbank in the run up to the election. My husband was already there, working in the Media Monitoring Unit and my personal highlight was briefing Gordon Brown for a press conference. Later that year I landed my dream job as a researcher/producer on Radio 4’s the World at One and PM programmes.

I left the BBC in 2001 after our second son was born and I moved back to Bournemouth with my family. It’s a great place to bring up a family and the new house, new baby adage proved to be true. Our third son was born the same year and that’s where we stopped. They go to a local school in Boscombe where I am a parent governor.

Ever since starting the Amnesty group at school, I’ve taken an interest in community groups. As I was emerging from a mound of nappies, The Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals became a Foundation Trust and I was elected onto the Council of Governors. That was in 2005 and since then I’ve been Deputy Chair of the Council, chaired the Remuneration committee and during my time on the Nominations Committee (Appointments) helped hire six non-Executive Directors for the Trust.

In 2007, the national body representing Foundation Trust hospital governors was established, the Foundation Trust Governors’ Association and I was elected its first Chair. This has allowed me to work at national and government level and has been immensely rewarding. I think local accountability in healthcare, as with all public services, is essential and people have to be involved to make it work.

I’m also a Trustee of a local charity in Springbourne and Boscombe, the Bourne Spring Trust. We provide space for community activities and are the permanent home for a few other organisations, such as Vita Nova and the Butterfly Foundation who give vital support to victims of domestic abuse. There’s also a pre-school group, Monday lunches, theatre performances (Vita Nova) and various music groups. I love the spirit the centre encapsulates – every community should have one!