Meysey Hampton C of E Primary School Visit

I was pleased to welcome the Meysey Hampton Primary School to the House of Commons for a brief Q&A session after their tour around Parliament. The House of Commons Education Service do an extremely educational and well organised tour of the Houses of Parliament for children of all ages. The aim is that every child has the opportunity to visit Parliament once in their school career. I am more than happy to organise these tours for any school who wishes to contact me. Furthermore, there are travel grants for schools visiting from outside London.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown with Meysey Hampton pupils

Cirencester Business Club Breakfast

Back in the constituency I held one of my regular Cirencester Business Club breakfasts. We were given an excellent speech by Sam Holliday, Development Manager at the Federation of Small Businesses, on ‘our mission to help smaller businesses achieve their ambition.’ Small businesses make a vital contribution to our local economy, particularly in the hospitality and tourism sector, and we must do everything possible to support them. Sam’s speech elicited a large number of questions from the audience.

The next breakfast will be held on 27 April 2018 with the Director of the Cotswolds Conservation Board, Martin Lane, speaking on ‘Should the Cotswolds become a National Park’.

A417 ‘Missing Link’

An important meeting took place in Gloucester on the subject of the A417 and the ‘missing link’. Along with myself, in attendance were senior Highways England officials and representatives of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and the Cotswolds Conservation Board.

Highways England have been considering up to 30 different options to solve this problem and have narrowed this down to a comparatively small number. The Cotswolds Conservation Board and CPRE have been making strong representations on what the final public consultation should include. This consultation will be made public on 15 February and I would strongly encourage everyone with an interest in this road to attend one of the planned public meetings and to respond with their views to the published options here.

Following this, the Secretary of State will then consider and hopefully announce his preferred option by the end of the year. The problem is that the bidding process, against other road schemes throughout the country, for what is known as the RIS2 funding pot has to demonstrate value for money – if the ‘missing link’ scheme becomes too expensive it could be ruled out on the grounds of cost.

History could easily repeat itself. Twenty years ago no one could agree locally on the preferred option that they wanted and the Roads Minister declined to do anything because of this impasse. In the meanwhile, traffic has increased considerably, pollution is worse and sadly the number of accidents and fatalities has grown.

Cotswold District Council

On to Cirencester, I held a series of meeting with councillors and council officers at the Cotswold District Council. In the aftermath of the Chesterton planning permission for 2,350 houses, I was informed that about 700 of these homes would be included in various categories of affordable or social housing. On this subject, I was able to give a full update on my town-wide Cirencester survey to 12,000 properties. The application for car parking at the rugby club, which will provide an extra 150 spaces, is also about to go to planning.

The new administrative body – Publica – which is a joint venture between CDC, Cheltenham Borough Council, Forest of Dean and West Oxfordshire District Council, is working well. These four councils are 100% shareholders in the company, of which CDC has a share. With Publica, there is fully accountability of all its actions, including salaries, which are regularly reviewed by the Cabinet and scrutiny committee.

The good news at the officers’ meeting was that the local plan has completed all its stages and except for a few minor modifications will go out to consultation to then be submitted to the Secretary of State for approval. As a result of the Chesterton development, CDC is well ahead of its five-year housing requirement. Without Chesterton, CDC would not have been able to meet this requirement, which would put it at a greater risk of losing appeals and having costs awarded against it.