Email from James Purnell MP
Posted by James Purnell, MP for Stalybridge and Hyde, at 15:59, Wed 7 June 2006:
Thank you for signing up to HearFromYourMP. I hope that it will be a useful forum for us to exchange views. My initial aim is to post a new e-mail at the beginning of every month, with this post counting for June. Between e-mails, I shall read your comments and occasionally add my own. I would welcome your opinions on this and we can review its success after a few months. I’m also hoping to encourage more people to sign up to make it as wide a forum as possible.
I would also encourage you to browse my website at www.jamespurnell.org.uk for local news stories and information, where you can also email me personally with a message.
The opening thing I’d like to talk about is my role as the MP for Stalybridge, Hyde and Mossley. I think of my job as being the voice of the area in Parliament, and a key part of this is representing our case with national government departments to ensure we secure our share of national investment in our local public services. To keep things as concise as possible, I just want to highlight two major projects that I’ve been working on:
Schools
My proudest achievement so far as an MP is definitely successfully lobbying the Government for Tameside to be included in the most recent wave of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) project. BSF is the biggest single government investment in improving school buildings for over 50 years. The aim is to rebuild or renew every secondary school in England, over a 10-15 year period, and Tameside will now be one of the first authorities to see these new school buildings. In the side of Tameside where we live, clearly schools like Hyde Technology and Mossley Hollins are in real need of this investment.
Rebuilding a school is not a quick process, as clearly the design must fulfill the needs of an area over the next few decades, but work is well underway on the plans for redevelopment across Tameside.
Tameside Hospital
Tameside Hospital is another example of one of our public services doing a good job in outdated facilities. One of my main aims when I was first elected was to campaign to get the hospital completely rebuilt and this is also going well. Under the Government’s PFI scheme, over £90m will be invested in the site in a building programme that will not be finished until 2010, but will include new wards, new operating theatres, centralised x-ray and outpatient clinics, a new car park and creating and a new main entrance to the hospital.
I know once announcements such as these are made people are always anxious to find out what happens next and when they will be able to use these new facilities. For these reasons I keep databases of interested constituents on each issue who I can write to as and when new developments occur. If you would like to join either of these, please contact me to let me know.
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