Three Rivers Voices

Welcome to Three Rivers Voices, stories of life in Three Rivers over the last 50 years or so. In a programme shared between Three Rivers District Council and Three Rivers Museum, we'll collect and present the experiences of local people involved in life around here. This is Fabian Hiscock of Three Rivers Museum, as we start in July 2026 with an imminent change of Prime Minister, the World Cup and national and international pressures of all sorts. But let's explore our own area and our own people.

KM I'm Keith Martin [KM], Chairman of Three Rivers District Council. I'm an elected Councillor - just for context, one of the Councillors is Chairman each year, and this year for the municipal year 2026-27, it's me.

Three Rivers District Council, along with many other districts and county councils, will be abolished. We're not sure of the date yet. It looks as though it's going to be April 2028. So in the meantime, we set up a project called Three Rivers Voices to record the voices of the people of Three Rivers, be they local businesses, school children, whatever. We don't have any type of boundaries on the people we want to record. We want to get the thoughts of everybody we can within the community, and we will keep those with Three Rivers Museum so that people can access them in future. So we're putting together as many of those as we can.

For the sake of context, it's the 23rd of June 2026. In the news today, the biggest item is that Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, resigned yesterday and we think that Andy Burnham will replace him. We have a heatwave. We don't normally have heatwaves in June, and schools have, for the first time as far as I'm aware, been given the option not to open because of the heat because it's dangerous to the children.

And we are currently in the World Cup group stage. England are playing Ghana tonight. It's the second of their three group games, and we really hope they'll win.

Today, I am interviewing Chris Lloyd [CL], who is a Councillor for Three Rivers District Council. Chris, would you like to say something about yourself?

CL Yeah, I was born in Watford in 1957, but I actually lived in Three Rivers. My father came to the area in the 1930s, but then during the war, he was in the RAF, and in 1940, both my parents got out of France. So if I ever have a bad day, I think, well, my parents got through the war and survived, so I'm glad to be here.

I went to Rickmansworth School. I got interested in local history when I was doing a scout project, and I was looking at the building just outside, Basing House, and seeing that William Penn had lived here. So I was a member of the Local History Society from about Year 9, as you call it now. It was the third year of secondary school. And I used to take my dad along and say, “you'll be young compared to the rest of the audience”. And then from there, I went to Bristol University where I studied chemistry and environmental chemistry. I had a year as Student Union Treasurer. I met my wife there.

We lived in Bristol when we first got married, and we came back to Croxley Green because I was a councillor in my early 20s, and when I went, there were daytime meetings of North Avon District Council, and I used to cycle 10 miles each way to get to meetings. But when I said, “do you give time off” (because I worked at Rolls-Royce at the time) and they said “no”, and no jobs materialised, so we came back and we were nearer both lots of parents, which was great, bringing our children up. They went to local schools. As our parents got older, it was great to be on hand to support them. And I worked in the IT industry. I worked for Rolls-Royce in Bristol, for Hitachi, and then in the telecommunications industry with T-Mobile, with EE, and finally with BT. But now I would say I'm involved in the community that I live in.

KM Thank you. And when did you first become a Three Rivers District Councillor and why?

CL The main motivation in 1991 was I wanted to get us doing doorstep recycling, and we were the first council in Hertfordshire to do that. It was quite a challenge, because I then got on a project which based me in San Francisco. And back in those days, you didn't have emails. So I'd ring my wife up and it would have been seven phone calls. And I had to say, well, I need to do this and that, because if I was away for a month, it actually made being a councillor quite challenging. Whereas when I worked in Germany, I could do my emails. I could do absolutely everything the same as if I was at home. So I couldn't have done my role as a councillor without the support of my wife.

KM There are 13 wards in Three Rivers. Can you tell us about the one you represent?

CL Yeah, it's the one I represent currently. Currently, there are 39 councillors with three councillors in each ward. When I first stood in Croxley, instead of the two wards with three councillors in each, Durrants and Dickinson, we had Croxley Green ward, which is what I represented.

It was Croxley North, which had two councillors, and Croxley South. So as I say, there were 48 councillors in those days. Durrants ward is basically from roughly the new road all the way across to Little Green Lane at sort of high level. But I'm interested in supporting people, not just in Croxley. Someone thought I was their councillor in Abbots Langley, so I'm currently helping them on some educational issues. So I will help and support anyone who contacts me.

KM Do you have any specific roles or responsibilities outside of being a ward councillor?

CL Yeah, I've been lead member for leisure for more than a decade. I'm passionate about getting people of all ages physically active, you know, whatever it is, whether it's bowls, tennis, padel, badminton, running, walking. As a council, we put on a lot of activities in the summer for people of all ages. And I think it's really important to get people out walking and running in our community.

We've got so much green space, and I hope the government doesn't build over all of it because actually, as COVID showed, green space is really, really important for people's health and mental well-being.

It was amazing to see whole families out walking. I was out with a friend recently and we said, “Isn't it such a shame that people have stopped doing that?” And she was commenting on the fact that some people take the lift one floor at work in Watford General Hospital. In my view, if you're working in a building, you should walk up those stairs. That exercise is really, really important to you. You know, walk rather than take the car.

But yeah, I'm really pleased to live in Three Rivers. I'm pleased that we have Watersmeet and the arts. It's been such a privilege to be lead member for leisure.

And during COVID, that included health, which when I was doing a full-time job was really quite challenging because it was weekly briefings. We really didn't know what was happening. I can remember Fabian interviewing me, and it would be quite interesting to listen to it. After COVID, he said, captured lots of people's different views of what COVID was like. So he was capturing history, just like you are today with this project that you're doing with the museum. It's really exciting. I won't be here in 100 years' time to listen and see what people make of what we've been saying, but I hope it just gives them an insight because in the old days, people would have written letters, and people don't write letters in the same way and capture it.

So if we can help share what it was like to live in Three Rivers over the last 50 years, and people can use that as a resource in schools and just see what were the key things for us.

KM Yeah, thank you. That's exactly what we're trying to do - to record the experiences of being in Three Rivers. And I think you're the longest serving councillor.

CL Well, there is nobody else on the council who was here in 1991. Yeah, 35 years. I don't count the years. I mean, I was a councillor, as I say, in North Avon for a while and then came back home. But yeah, no, I care about the community that I live in.

KM And in the 35 years, what's been the biggest change in being a councillor from 1991 to today?

CL I would even go back to the 1980s. I would say the planning powers have changed significantly, but within the last 12 months, the latest changes on planning, I think we really need to get across to the public to realise that if somebody puts in an application for over 150 houses, the government can call it in if we turn it down. So for the first time in over 40 years, I am no longer on the planning committee, because I'm not going to rubber stamp things that I don't believe are the right thing for our community.

It's really important to keep Greenbelt. We have three chalk streams. That's why Watersmeet is… - you know, the Chess, the Colne and the Gade all meet here. That is why we're called Three Rivers. We've really got to respect and be passionate about it.

KM But things that have changed?

CL Well, one of the things that I changed was the whole process of secondary transfer. I went to meet six parents and 60 parents turned up. Three years later, having met government ministers, been on TV, worked with local headteachers, worked with the county…