Beauty and lifestyle expert Gina hopes to continue her family’s tradition of community activism in pledge to protect a valuable piece of the town’s history

TV PRESENTER and beauty and lifestyle expert Gina Akers, 37, is involved with the Lydiard Park Heritage Trust. The trust aims to take over the running of the house and park, a role put out to tender by the council. She is a great-granddaughter of Swindon councillor and social justice campaigner Francis Elliott Akers, who bought and gifted the house to the people of Swindon. Gina lives in Rodbourne Cheney, and her partner, Shaun, is a musician.

“It’s a duty,” said Gina Akers of her involvement with Lydiard Park Heritage Trust.

“That’s how I see it. It’s my family’s heritage. It’s our community’s heritage which I care very much about.

“I’ve been involved with lots of community projects and groups over the years and I do feel it’s a duty – but it’s one I’m happy to have and I’ll do all I can to help.

“This is my family’s heritage and the people’s heritage but it’s also the community of Swindon’s heritage. It’s not just mine, it’s not just yours, it’s everybody out there walking past the Advertiser offices today.

“This is theirs. It needs to stay that way.

“All the children that you see today, it’s their park and it will be their future generations’ park as well. We’re not just protecting it right now – we have to think about the future, our future green spaces and the future heritage of Swindon because that is a huge story.

“It’s very hard to keep the story alive if there isn’t something to visit and see. How much better is the story when you can visit it and you can see it and you can experience it and you can feel it?”

Gina readily acknowledges that the town is part of her DNA and she is part of the town’s. Her father ran Akers garage and her mother worked for many years worked in payroll and credit control before switching to working in a pottery.

Great-grandfather Francis, a farmer’s son, gave so much to public life as councillor, mayor, alderman and campaigner that the family name is remembered in Akers Way, Akers Roundabout and Akers Court.

Francis also founded the Vastern Sawmills in what is now Royal Wootton Bassett, after which other locations are named.

He was a vocal campaigner for the elderly, and after he died in 1965 a portrait of him was commissioned from donations by about 1,000 pensioners and given a place of honour at the old Penhill Common Room.

It was inscribed: “Our champion fighter and great gentleman.”

In 1943 he had bought Lydiard House and about 150 acres of land, some of it farmed by tenants, which was sold in lots. The old Swindon Corporation had been interested, but only in the house and a portion of the land. Had its bid succeeded, it would have been left with the house but probably no way of reaching it without crossing private land.

Francis gifted the house to the people of Swindon via the corporation. Tenant farmers were given the chance – often for the first time – to buy their plots at reasonable prices, and the council was given a good deal on the rest. Tenants who couldn’t or wouldn’t buy their plots became safe tenants of the local authority.

Francis wrote in a letter at the time: “I am glad that the community may be possessed of 150 acres of one of the most beautiful spots in the county.”

The family treasures one of his official mayoral Christmas cards, which has an image of the house.

He seems to have inherited and passed down a strong work ethic. Gina says creativity is another family trait. Her immediate family alone includes a vet, the manager of a high-profile London beauty salon, a fashion editor and a trainee pharmacist.

Gina herself studied business and management at Oxford Brookes University, as well as training in teaching. While there she also wrote articles for hair and beauty trade journals. She had first worked in a hair salon at the age of 12. When she received an email from Granada Television she thought her friends were playing a practical joke, but it was the start of a TV career which has included The Salon, This Morning and countless other magazine and consumer programmes.

Gina said: “They’re all bringing knowledge and information to the viewers at home, whether it’s the best beauty buys or how to avoid a scam.

“We have all been led down the garden path by something at some time, so the more awareness we can raise in these points the better.

“I’m a very equality-driven person. I believe in a fair chance for everybody, whether that’s in education or what happens to our public services and facilities. I think people need to be heard. There’s a wealth of very clever, very switched-on people with excellent ideas but it’s very rare that they’re listened to or that their ideas are taken on board.”

She is committed to the future of Swindon. “I hate the outside perception that it’s a sleepy town with sleepy people in it who don’t really know anything. That’s very, very wrong. There are some very clever and community-minded people who are not celebrated enough. It’s not just recognition, it’s about being heard.

“Young people need to see things being done right. They are our future leaders. We need to be setting a positive and valid example for them. There’s not enough engagement with young people.

“Young people really need something to aspire to.”

She is fond of an anecdote about her great-grandfather: “There is a story that there was a belief in the sawmills and the markets about how he had said he was going to buy it, but that he didn’t have the resources to do it.

“Quite clearly he did but there was this talk, and I think that urged him on more – when people said, ‘Oh no, he’ll never do it.

“I think all of us sometimes need that. It’s the naysayers we should thank in a way, because it’s the naysayers who spur us on the most to achieve our aims.

“Never complain about the naysayers. They don’t realise it but they might be doing a positive thing.”