Parliament has now risen for February Recess so I am taking
the opportunity to spend as much time as possible in Mid-Cornwall, out and
about meeting local residents and businesses to hear concerns and feedback on
my work for you in Westminster.
Last week I was pleased, along with Cornwall MP colleagues
to secure additional funding for Cornwall from the Government.
You may have noticed that the Lib Dems and their friends who
run Cornwall Council have recently started campaigning for fairer funding for
Cornwall. This seems to have involved putting a press release out announcing
their intentions and trying to get a hashtag trending on Twitter, but sadly not
a whole lot of actual work.
It is clear that there have been historic funding inequities
for Cornwall. For a variety of reasons successive governments of different
parties have long failed to address these issues. However since my election in
2015, I have made getting the balance restored one of my key priorities.
I was pleased therefore, last week to meet with Local
Government Minister Rishi Sunak and receive his commitment for an additional
£1.7m funding for Cornwall’s Adult Social Care services and an extra £1.5m for
the Rural Services Delivery Grant.
This goes along with other recent examples in the last year
including the £2.3m funding already announced for infrastructure delivery at
the West Carclaze Garden Village in Mid-Cornwall, and the £79m the Government
has given for the building of the A30 link road to St Austell and the
surrounding area.
It is great to see this additional funding from the
Government. As well as the direct impact it will have on Cornwall, indirectly
it has led to Cornwall Council deciding to tone down its plans for a massive
5.9% council tax rise this year, which will be a real boost for hard-working
people who are already squeezed.
There is still more to do though. In Parliament I chair the
Rural Fair Share Campaign group, a cross-party group of MPs, who support an
impartial, objective, needs-based approach to funding local public services.
The campaign aims to reduce the rural penalty, which sees
funding for public services in rural areas receive up to 40% less than in urban
areas, whether this is for our schools, local government or Police.
I am pleased that the Government has now agreed to look at
the funding formulas used again and conduct a comprehensive review that I
believe will show it is simply more expensive to deliver services in rural
areas than urban areas. We have already made good progress in establishing the
principle that there is an additional cost of providing services in more
sparsely populated parts of the country. But we now need to see this turned
into more hard extra cash. The additional money secured last week is a good
stopgap but I will continue to campaign for permanent change to ensure Cornwall
gets the funding we deserve in the future.
My team and I are here to serve the whole constituency and
work hard to make a real difference to the lives of everyone needing support.
The office is open to the public Monday – Friday 10.00am – 4.00pm (no
appointment necessary). If there is an issue you would like my assistance on
then please, either visit the office or contact me on either 01726 829379 or
office@stevedouble.org.uk. Additionally, I hold regular, appointment only,
advice surgeries across the constituency. Dates of these can be found at:
www.stevedouble.org.uk/events
