Meet Pickering's new mayor - Judy Dixon (From Gazette & Herald)

Meet Pickering's new mayor - Judy Dixon

ONE of the most active members of Pickering Town Council in the community, Coun Judy Dixon, is to be the market town's new mayor.

A retired teacher and the wife of the Rev Harold Dixon, a retired United Reformed Church minister, she lived in various parts of the country before moving to Pickering. She taught in Birmingham, Staffordshire and Nottinghamshire where she also undertook adult literacy teaching.

A lifelong member of the Labour Party, Coun Dixon, who comes from Stockton-on-Tees, also served on a parish council in Nottinghamshire.

On moving to Pickering, Coun Dixon, a mother of three, helped start the senior citizen's luncheon club and became a leading member of the Parents in Ryedale Support Group and the town's Justice and Peace Group. She also represents Pickering on the national park's parish forum for the southern area and the Ryedale branch of the Yorkshire Local Councils Association.

She was also involved in the millennium wall hanging in Pickering, and one of her recent successes has been to help instigate better bus services, especially in the evenings, between Scarborough and Helmsley.

Coun Dixon is now organising a poster campaign to promote the evening services, and hopes to follow it with a house-to-house delivery of a timetable in the area.

"It is important that the service is used if it is to continue successfully," she said.

The new deputy mayor is to be Coun Tom Bateman.

Updated: 13:48 Wednesday, May 07, 2003