Cllr Simon Eardley – Sheriff of Chester 2025-26
Cllr Simon Eardley
Councillor Simon Eardley was born in Chester at the (then) West Cheshire Hospital and has lived in the area for more or less his whole life, being raised on his family’s small dairy farm in the village of Ince. Members of the Eardley family have farmed in various parts of the county for at least the last 200 years.
His primary and secondary education took place locally in Cheshire and he then went on to read History and Politics at the University of Warwick where he graduated with a BA (Hons) in 2001. More recently he obtained a ‘Foundation Degree in Arts’ focused on Ministry and ‘Practical Theology’ from the University of Chester in 2023 as part of his ‘Licensed Lay Minister’ (Reader) training in the Church of England. He serves in this capacity in his home parish of Thornton-le-Moors with Ince & Elton, and occasionally leads services / preaches in Backford and Capenhurst.
Since his first graduation, Simon has worked mainly in politics, for the Conservative Party in a number of roles around the country, including in Cheshire and in Europe.
He now works in the maritime industry as Head of Policy and Innovation for Mersey Maritime Ltd, 2023-present. Mersey Maritime is a small regional focused cluster organisation which seeks to represent the interests of the maritime sector in the Liverpool City Region. He was also Regional Cluster Development Manager for Maritime UK, 2019-2023.
Simon was elected as a Cheshire West & Chester Borough Councillor for the Saughall and Mollington Ward in May 2019 and again in May 2023. He is currently the Deputy Leader of the Conservative Group & Shadow Cabinet Member of Environment, Highways, Transport, Climate & Nature.
His wider interests include travel, books and fine book collecting (he has some 8,000 volumes, including over 800 ‘orange’ 1st edition Penguin paperbacks in multiple locations…and no space for more), history (particularly the Tudor period – especially religious history covering the Reformation and the English Civil War), walking in the countryside, wildflower spotting and turning the fruits of hedgerows into miscellaneous jars of jam/jelly or rather medicinal damson gin! He is ‘Recorder’ of the Cheshire Pitt Club, a small dining society established to keep alive the memory of the great 18th century Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, which meets in the city of Chester regularly to this day.