Liberal Democrat councillor, Iain Roberts wrote this profile for Mark Pack’s Lib Dem Newswire reproduced here with permission

Who in the Liberal Democrats is most able to make a difference and improve people’s lives?

Despite liking to think of ourselves as the party of pavement politics and local government, we do rather like our national politicians, with the humblest backbencher (and admittedly that’s now a rather select group) enjoying more attention than most council leaders. Even unelected Lords are often treated as minor royalty in comparison.

And yet when it comes to the politicians who are actually making a difference to people’s lives, taking decisions about how hundreds of millions of pounds should be spent, it is the Lib Dems in local government, not at Westminster, making the running.

So thank you to Mark who is allowing me to pen a series of articles about the Lib Dems in leadership positions in local authorities – either as council leaders or deputy leaders in a coalition. Over the coming months I will introduce you to some of the Liberal Democrats whose day-to-day decisions are making a real impact on the lives of thousands, and in some cases millions, of people.

My subject is one of the small group of people who has a realistic claim to be the Lib Dem with the most influence over people’s lives: Sue Derbyshire. Cllr Derbyshire is leader of Stockport Council, the only urban council in the North of England still run by the Lib Dems.

Sue’s first council experience was as fifty percent of the Liberal group on St Helens Council in the 1980s. Moving to Stockport, she was elected in Manor ward in 1999, her seat giving the Lib Dems a majority on the council for the first time. She held a number of Executive and non-Executive roles before becoming leader in 2012.

Sue leads a council responsible for providing services to 290,000 people, with day-to-day spending of £235 million a year (and falling – thank you Mr Osborne). The council’s capital investment programme in the borough comes to nearly a billion pounds over the next few years.

Sue sees her achievements in Stockport being built around a strong vision and ambition for the borough, with a consensus model of leadership – all the more important since the Lib Dems lost overall control in 2011 and run a minority administration.

But Cllr Derbyshire also works beyond Stockport’s borders, thanks to AGMA (the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities, founded in 1985) and more recently the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. Sue chairs the Low Carbon Hub, which is on target to reduce emissions across Greater Manchester by 48% by 2020 compared to the 1990 baseline. She leads on planning and housing for the combined authority, and is developing the country’s first collaborative plan for strategic planning and housing in the country. All ten Greater Manchester councils will have to sign up for the plan to go ahead and it could shape the future of Greater Manchester for its 2.7 million residents for years to come.