AS Middlewich prepares to head to the polls on December 12, the Guardian has interviewed all candidates in mid Cheshire.

Here, Green Party candidate for Congleton Richard McCarthy explains why he believes he should get your vote.

Tell us a bit about yourself…

I have been in the Green Party since the late 1990s. I went to university in Aberdeen, spent some time in London and then went to Glasgow to do an MSc in energy systems and environmental management – I think it as the first MSc of its kind in the country.

I stayed in Glasgow and after six months doing voluntary work I got a job with Energy Action Scotland, carrying out energy ratings in homes. I worked at the charity for five years but left because of internal politics.

I became a secondary school maths teacher, working in Scotland before following my wife – who is a university lecturer – down to Wolverhampton, and then onto Cheshire where we have been for about the last 10 years.

Is this the first time you have stood as an MP?

Yes, although I once stood to be an MSP and finished third in the list.

It’s daunting. I think it is easy to say that you would stand as an MP, but it is harder to know what to do, you don’t have many resources, I’m not used to standing up at a hustings – so we will see how it goes.

What are the main Green Party policies that would make a difference to people in Congleton?

I think the biggest thing is increasing energy from renewable sources. It is such an important thing for our whole country.

For Cheshire I think a big element would be UBI. Cheshire has seen an awful lot of rough sleeping in recent years.

I was talking to friends in Congleton about this, and you see people sleeping in doorways, sleeping out at night. Universal basic income, along with more housebuilding, would mean that we would see much less people sleeping outside.

You mention universal basic income – how would that work?

We want people to have the confidence that they can live their lives well, that they will not be destitute, and that they can preserve something for what they want to do.

It means they can do something they have more interest in rather than something they feel they have to do to make ends meet.

Is that policy the biggest difference between yourselves and the other parties?

I would say that the biggest difference is the vision we have for how much we are going to put into retrofitting homes – we want to heat homes with renewable electricity, but if you have them properly insulated then there is less demand for energy.

Properly insulated homes would be hotter in the winter and cooler in the summer.

These homes will stay there for the next 50 to 100 years and I think it is exactly what we need to do.

Where do you stand on HS2?

The other thing that we are different with Labour on is that they want to continue growth. Labour say they will grow the economy and that is how they would pay for what they want to do.

The Green Party does not want to grow the economy because we are already using too many resources per person. We want to share those resources much better so that everybody is happy with what they have got.

So we are very much against HS2. It is far too expensive, it will destroy ancient woodlands which we absolutely have to preserve for our wildlife. We’re also against the expansion of airports, which Labour is supporting.

Two major relief roads are being built in this constituency – in Congleton and Middlewich. Are you opposed to that?

I think we should definitely roll back on it. The whole point is to reduce road transport and traffic, and to reduce the need to travel around in personal cars.

We want to switch all traffic to electric by 2030 so it can be powered by renewable energy – but we don’t see that being a case of replacing one car for one car. We hope that, especially in urban areas, we can make it easier for people to share cars.

You might have 10 to 15 people that can access a car, or it could be that you have an app and you can access the car that is closest to you.

So with that being the case, we see traffic going down, and there is no point planning for that by building more roads. Yes we do want to take traffic away from town centres, but we would like to make it easier for people to get across town safely by walking or cycling.

It requires a lot of carbon dioxide to build a road, and then that is a whole area that cannot absorb carbon, so it just seems to be going in the wrong direction.

Middlewich residents have long campaigned for the railway line to be reopened – would you support that?

Yes – very much so. That would help to take people out of individual cars, it means we would not have the requirement for bypasses and relief roads. It would connect our communities.

There are a lot of people in communities that are trapped. They have no bus services to get to the nearest town, and if they have no access to a car they are trapped.

There have been a lot of new homes built in the constituency in recent years, with more on the way…

We have to be more careful about where houses are built.

I know that local authorities have had to allow certain developments because the Government has overruled them in the past.

We would make sure that the planning function in local authorities is restored so that we can plan more effectively.

Homes should also be completely energy efficient. All new homes should built to Passivhaus standards straight away, and when planning permission has been granted, we should be able to change those plans to make sure homes are built to that standard.

We also want to see more shared housing – more flats with shared gardens. We need to move away from the idea that an Englishman’s house is his castle and move towards a more shared experience.

I think there are areas where we could more easily convert offices into flats where they are not being used. In Congleton there are old mill buildings where nothing seems to be happening to them.

So I think looking at the planning system more carefully is a priority.

Where do you stand on the badger cull as a means to control Bovine TB?

I am absolutely against the cull. The science has shown that where we cull badgers it is actually more likely to increase TB than decrease it.

What we should be looking at is inoculating badgers so that they don’t get TB.

With bovine TB it seems to be that the main culprit is when we move cows around, rather than badgers themselves spreading it.

We would want to reduce the number of cows being moved around – being more careful on how we move animals around, working with farmers.

If we inoculated all cows then we would not have a problem, that would seem a safer solution.

Finally, you have a day off – no work or campaigning to do. How would you spend your ideal day in Cheshire?

I love living in Alsager now, but I previously enjoyed living in Congleton, and it is a great place to go for a walk.