“It had shamed me for having poor mental health”

Rich Lehmann almost didn’t agree to this interview. The former leader of Kent County Council’s Green and Independent group spent months reluctant to speak publicly about the mental health crisis that saw him step back from frontline politics and ultimately leave the Green Party. After a lengthy back and forth, he agreed to speak in the hope that sharing his experience might encourage others to take mental health seriously, particularly in the often unforgiving world of local politics...

Born in Sidcup, Rich grew up in Medway before settling in Faversham with his wife in 2006. He went on to serve the rural area surrounding the town as both a county and borough councillor, becoming leader of Kent County Council’s Green and Independent group after the 2021 elections.

Following the 2025 local elections, Rich took time away from the council. He stepped down as group leader and eventually left the Green Party. I met him at his home in Faversham to talk about the events that led to those decisions, and why he believes it’s important to speak openly about mental health.

Rich first joined the Green Party in 2014, while living in Medway, during the Rochester and Strood by-election. “It was because of the rise of UKIP and other elements that came along with that, i.e. Britain First.”

Appearing on a ballot for the first time in 2015 for Watling Ward in Medway, where he lived at the time, Rich acknowledges he stood as a paper candidate to give residents the opportunity to vote Green. “I got a reasonable number of votes.”

He briefly left the Greens in 2017 with a view to joining Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, a move he ultimately never made. “I hoped the party would actually get behind him, but it was clear fairly quickly that that wasn’t going to happen and there was no point in me joining the Labour Party.”

Rich moved back to Faversham and became involved with Plastic Free Faversham. “I put all of my efforts into that for a couple of years until the end of 2019, when the general election reinvigorated my interest in politics.” He rejoined the Greens in December 2019, with the party’s local election success in Swale helping persuade him to stand for Kent County Council in 2021. It proved to be “a very intense campaign over the course of about nine or ten months.”

From 2022, Rich became more heavily involved with the Green Party, putting himself forward as co-chair at the Kent Greens AGM. As his confidence grew, he became leader of the Green and Independent group at Kent County Council in October that year.

“I felt that I really wanted to be delivering the speeches at full council meetings and managing the group, because it felt like we were five councillors, rather than a group.” The Greens are not a whipped party, so the role was largely about “coordinating the group, deciding who sits on which committee and chairing the group meetings that we had every fortnight.”

That group included two independent councillors, Mike Baldock and Peter Harmon, who died in 2024.

Initially planning to continue his work as a professional photographer to supplement his council income, Rich soon found he didn’t have the mental bandwidth to do “two very different things.” He successfully stood for Swale Borough Council, finding that taking on another council role meant his head would be “in the same space the whole time and it’s a lot easier to manage your day-to-day business when it’s all council work.”

“I first considered the fact that I might be neurodivergent because I was struggling with my workload, and the people I was telling didn’t seem to comprehend why I was struggling as much as I was.” Rich received an adult ADHD diagnosis after being elected to Swale Borough Council in August 2023.

Rich stood down as co-chair of Kent Greens in 2024 as he continued to struggle with the different roles. “My co-chair was excellent and took on the bulk of the work we were doing together.”

I ask where the breakdown in relationships that ultimately led him to leave the Green Party began. Sitting opposite me with his eyes closed, Rich takes a deep breath. “That’s a really tough question to answer because it was a slow, gradual process.”