Westminster Week
Posted by Kitty Ussher, MP for Burnley, at 15:52, Fri 5 October 2007:
Dear Friend,
Down in Westminster, election fever has hit. Although parliament isn’t actually back till next week, the place is full of MPs wandering around with furrowed brows as they try to get their heads round the possibility of an early election campaign. Diaries for October are being cleared and staff being urgently recruited. At the time of writing no decision has actually been made, but there seems to be a growing expectation of an announcement one way or another soon after parliament comes back on Monday. Whatever the prime minister decides, my team is ready in Burnley and in the meantime we’re getting on with the business of standing up for Burnley’s interests to national government and sorting out the issues raised by individual constituents.
I came back as normal on Thursday night last week and spent the first part of Friday catching up with correspondence in my office in the town centre. Then it was off to visit the local Mencap group, based at the CVS building on Yorkshire Street. They are a great group of people and they had prepared well for the meeting, asking me all sorts of very good questions from why they couldn’t get computers in their day centres to why carers couldn’t get subsidised bus travel if they were helping a disabled person to whether I liked working for Gordon Brown (the answer to that, by the way, is yes). As well as taking away their issues to raise with the appropriate authorities I also asked them to vote on whether they’d prefer an election now or next year and the very clear view was to have one now. I’d be interested to know what other readers think.
Later that day I held my routine meeting with the chief executive of Burnley council, Steve Rumbelow. I always find these meetings helpful because it’s an opportunity to raise with the council the issues that my constituents are raising with me – a quarter of the cases we took on last year were directly to do with Burnley Council. It’s also a chance to co-ordinate our work on the larger regeneration issues facing the town: last week we talked about the plans to upgrade the Weavers Triangle as well as our lobbying strategy to get as much as possible for Burnley out of the money the government allocates to local authorities across the country. But we don’t always agree – their decision to support Elevate in its plans to scrap grants to people forced out of their houses when their area is redeveloped, replacing them with loans, is something I will never accept.
Next up was our Friday surgery. As regular readers of this column will know, I try to vary the location so that over the course of a year I am visiting all the main communities in the constituency. This week we were at the Enterprise Centre on the edge of the Stoops estate and I was glad to see many people local to that area come along, as well as constituents from further afield. If you haven’t been onto Stoops for a while, I’d advise you to go and look. There is more work to be done but nobody can doubt that the investment that has already taken place from the government and Calico housing association has drastically improved that estate as a place to live.
Saturday saw us doing a surgery at the café in Asda – a firm favourite as a location in my office due to the ready availability of breakfast and shopping opportunities! We had a good number of people at both surgeries. At the moment we’re taking on around 30 new cases a week and I hope constituents feel that they have a range of ways to contact me either in person, by letter or on-line. See below for details.
On Saturday afternoon our family all went to Turf Moor to support Burnley in the rather frustrating game against Crystal Palace and then spent a thankfully quiet weekend together before heading back to Westminster again late on Sunday night.
With all good wishes,
Kitty Ussher MP
6 ways to contact Kitty Ussher MP
Write to: House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA or 2 Victoria Street, Burnley BB11 1DD Phone: 01282 450840 Fax: 01282 839623 By email: ussherk@parliament.uk Web: www.kittyussher.com In person: Office open 10am-4pm Mon-Fri. Next surgeries are Friday 12th October 3.30pm - 5pm Padiham Town Hall, Padiham; Saturday 13th October 10am – 12 noon Burnley Central Methodist Church, Hargreaves Street. No appointment needed.
Commenting on this message is now disabled.