Lia Nici

Lia Nici-Townend (born 1 August 1969) is a British Conservative Party politician. She has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Great Grimsby since the 2019 general election.

She was formerly a media studies lecturer at Grimsby Institute, and executive producer of Estuary TV from 2013–2018, where she also lists herself as having been CEO of Estuary TV following the dissolving of the CIC company by the Grimsby Institute and EstuaryTV becoming, in effect, a department of the college.

Early life and career

Nici-Townend was a college lecturer for 20 years, including in the Media Studies department at what is now the Grimsby Institute, a further-education college. She was head of East Coast Media at the Institute from 2004.

She was the Executive Producer of Estuary TV, a Grimsby-based Community Interest Company, from 2013 until the company was dissolved. Following its dissolution, she continued to act as CEO of "Estuary TV" (now a department of the Institute, who had owned and dissolved the CIC). Nici-Townend has listed herself as having been self-employed since September 2018.

Political career

Elections

Nici-Townend stood as the Conservative candidate for the safe Labour seat of Kingston upon Hull North in 2017, losing to sitting Labour MP Diana Johnson by 14,322 votes.

In May 2018, she was elected as a councillor for the Scartho ward of North East Lincolnshire Council.

In August 2019, Nici-Townend was selected as the Conservative candidate for Great Grimsby for the 2019 snap general election. She won the seat with 54.9% of the vote and a margin of 7,331 votes over Labour, who had held the seat for 74 years; defeating the sitting Labour MP Melanie Onn, who had represented Great Grimsby since Austin Mitchell's retirement in 2015.

Background

Nici-Townend was for several years the Executive Producer of Estuary TV, a local television channel incorporated as a ‘Community Interest Company’, a registered entity intended to be run for community benefit. The channel was criticised for receiving £300,000 from the BBC under a scheme to meet quotas of local news content in return for subsidies. 2014 data showed that its programmes were seen by fewer than 200 people, some having no viewers at all. The BBC refused to reveal how many of Estuary TV's programmes it actually broadcast.

After Estuary TV CIC was dissolved by owners The Grimsby Institute, Nici-Townend continued as executive producer of "Estuary TV", now a department of the Grimsby Institute, and on 8 May 2018 confirmed herself in the register of NE Lincolnshire Councillors' interests as being the "CEO" of Estuary TV.