VILLAGERS in Uffculme have been getting used to having a history-making MP as one of their neighbours.

Richard Foord, aged 44, lives on the edge of the village with his wife Kate and three children aged eight to 13 years, who attend local schools.

A month ago, he set a record for overturning an MP’s majority when voters in the Tiverton and Honiton constituency went to the polls for a by-election.

Mr Foord, who has lived in Uffculme for 11 years, made the 24,000 majority of former Conservative MP Neil Parish into a Lib Dem win by 4,000 votes, the largest majority ever turned over.

Now, instead of cycling to Tiverton Parkway railway station and then journeying by train to Exeter for his work in the city’s university, Mr Foord spends his weeks in the Palace of Westminster, London.

“It is a maze of staircases and ante-rooms and it all looks the same, it is so easy to get lost there,” he said. “You navigate your way around by paintings and busts rather than signposts.”

If he was to join the Parliamentary rock band – yes, there is one, called MP4, comprising three current MPs and one who was not returned at the last General Election – Mr Foord might be able to follow the noise to the practice room.

He learned to play drums at an early age and ‘starred’ in several bands during his Army service.

“The trouble is, you get moved around so often that a band only gets to perform a few times before you are moving on and split up,” he said.

A keen cyclist, Mr Foord donates monthly to cycling charity Sustrans and has carried out voluntary work for it, including some time ago when he was part of the Culm Valley Trail movement working on a cycleway to link villages together.

He qualified as a mountain leader in the Army and has since put those skills to good use by volunteering with scout troops in Willand and Cullompton.

Earlier in the year, he helped prepare the Willand scouts for the 2022 Exmoor Rotary Challenge, a 16-mile test of navigation and endurance skills which was held for the first time since pre-Covid.

Trying to balance a Parliamentary career with family life has already proven a challenge, one to which Mrs Foord has risen.

“I take my son to play cricket whenever I can and both boys go to scouts and my daughter does gymnastics,” he said.

“My wife is a trooper and helps so we can get these things done and keep the family together.”

The family support Uffculme village life as much as possible, having their car serviced in the local garage, drinking Otter ales and listening to live bands in the Ostler Inn, eating coffee or carrot cake in Café No 11, and having their hair cut locally.

“I do as much as I can as locally as I can,” he said.

Mr Foord loves Sunday afternoon walks at Hembury Hillfort, in the Blackdown Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and swimming in the sea at Branscombe, which is between Seaton and Sidmouth.

His charity work has seen him raise raised thousands of pounds, including running in the London Marathon in aid of the Royal British Legion.

The popularity in Uffculme of Richard Foord was highlighted with a visit to Café No 11, where he loves to have coffee and carrot cake.

Café owner Ian Jarman, who has run the business for five years, said: “He is a good neighbour, he lives a couple of doors away from me and spends loads of time with his children.

“They are a very nice family, always helpful.

“During the pandemic they put letters through everyone’s doors offering to help with shopping and other tasks.”

Mr Jarman said ‘unassuming’ would be a word to sum up his new MP.

“He will do a good job for the locality,” he said. “He is very keen to do well.”

Becoming an MP has been an ambition for some time for Richard Foord.

He first stood for Parliament in 2017, going up against then-Conservative Minister Liam Fox in North Somerset and coming a distant third in an area in which he grew up.

Mr Foord was born in Weston-super-Mare, where the likes of Conservative peer and best-selling author Lord Jeffery Archer, comedy actor John Cleese, and actor Rupert Graves also grew up.

He went to school in Backwell, and then on to university where he first joined the Liberal Democrat Party in 1997.

At the age of 22 he joined the Army and served in the Adjutant General’s Corps, letting his political membership lapse for 10 years until leaving with the rank of Major.

During his time in the Army, he served with a United Nations peacekeeping team in Kosovo, training former insurgents to become a democratic security force for their country.

He also had two operational tours of Iraq, stationed at Basra Airport, where he taught British officers about the history and culture of the country.

“The insurgency was still in full swing the first time I went and we were being attacked by Iranian-backed militias who bombarded us every night,” he said.

“Later on, when I went back it had calmed down quite a bit.”

Following military service, Mr Foord worked for Exeter University enabling their scientists to work with counterparts in Asia and had become head of global partnerships by the time he left last year to work remotely for Oxford University.

Of his new role in Parliament, Mr Foord said: “I feel in my element there.

“But although I have lived here for 11 years I still feel I have as much to learn about the constituency and the way things run in Devon as I do in Westminster.

“My ambitions are for my area. I really would like to see my patch as well represented in Parliament as possible.

“We do find in rural areas like this when they have been reliably Conservative for so long, they do get taken for granted.”

One of his early duties has been to replace Mr Parish on the Metro board which has been planning new railway stations for Wellington and Cullompton.

The board sat on Friday (July 8) where he was brought up to speed with the project and met Wellington’s MP Rebecca Pow.

“I am hopeful we are going to see some action on this,” said Mr Foord. “I am up for working cross-party to get things done.”

Profile and analysis by John Thorne