Published: Wednesday 21 May 2025
Councillor Tom Bennett has been elected as Mayor of Kensington and Chelsea for 2025-26 following a vote at the Annual Council Meeting on Wednesday 21 May.
Tom has appointed Councillor Aarien Areti as his Deputy Mayor, who has represented Holland ward since May 2018 and his wife, Mrs Beatrice Gatti Bennett, has been appointed as Mayoress. The Mayoral Chaplain is Revd Dave Matthews, who is the Area Dean of Chelsea and the Associate Vicar of St Luke’s Redcliffe Square.
At the Annual Council meeting, Tom announced London’s Air Ambulance Charity as his Mayoral Charity for the year.
Mayor of Kensington and Chelsea, Councillor Tom Bennett said:
“It is an enormous honour to be elected by my colleagues to represent our borough as Mayor. We are lucky to have so many amazing organisations and community groups across our borough, and I can’t wait to meet as many as possible.. My themes for the year are civic pride, civic unity, and civic joy, and I will do everything I can to help foster those in RBKC.
I am also proud to be working with London’s Air Ambulance Charity as the Mayoral Charity for the upcoming year: through their enormous skill and heroism they have saved numerous lives in Kensington and Chelsea, and across London, and I hope to further raise awareness of them and support their amazing work.”
CEO of London’s Air Ambulance Charity, Jonathan Jenkins said:
“We are incredibly grateful to Mayor Tom Bennett for selecting us as his Mayoral Charity. This support arrives at a crucial moment, as we continue our work to transform the future of pre-hospital care in London.
The people of this city are our greatest asset and their continued support helps us bring more complex care to the roadside, save more lives and shape the future of trauma medicine, here in London and around the world.”
Tom was first elected as Councillor for Redcliffe ward in Kensington and Chelsea in 2018 and was re-elected in 2022. Since then, he has served the Council as Chairman of the Environment Select Committee and Vice-Chairman of the Planning Committee and has served his ward through many local initiatives, including on pedestrian safety, tree-planting and housing.
Tom grew up in Berkshire, before moving to the USA for university, where he studied Economics. Tom moved to Kensington and Chelsea with his now wife, Beatrice, in 2013, and have since welcomed a daughter, Aurelia, and a son, Lorenzo, to the world; both born in Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.
Aside from his duties on the Council, Tom is also the Financial Director (and co-founder) of an environmental technology company, which designs and manufactures monitoring systems for the water and flood sectors.
For more information about the Mayoralty, please visit: