I will never forget that I am your voice in Westminster and so I always want to know what matters most to you. To this end, in September I launched a St Austell and Newquay constituency autumn survey, so you can let me know the issues you feel should be focused on in the coming months, through the rest of 2021 and beyond.
Thank you to everyone who took their time to complete the
survey. Nearly 500 people completed it in just over a month, and I thought in
my column this week that I would go through some of the results
I asked, generally, which issues were most important to you
and your family. The responses received showed that the NHS and Housing were
most important to the majority of people who replied.
I asked in terms of local priorities, what you felt I should
be prioritising to work with Cornwall Council on, and the majority of those who
replied said that they felt affordable housing and health and social care were
most important.
In terms of the actions that I highlighted in my survey, the
ones that had most support from responders were ‘More funding for Cornwall's
NHS including £450million to improve services in our Duchy’ and ‘Working
with the Government to better regulate second homes and holiday lets’, both
of which had more than 90% of responders in favour. Creating more opportunities
and jobs for young people also scored highly throughout the survey
There was clearly significant interest in health and social
care and housing issues, as well as the need to create more opportunities for our
young people at every level of my survey responses, so I thought I would update
you on both what I have already done, and what I will be doing in these areas
in the future.
In my time as MP since 2015 I have worked with the
Government to increase NHS funding across Cornwall, with a real term increase
every year. Since 2019 we have also seen £100million for a new women and
children's hospital at RCH Treliske, and £450million to upgrade NHS services across
Cornwall. As well as all of, this last year the Government wrote off
£42.5million of RCH Treliske’s debt.
There are of course extraordinary current pressures on our
NHS, caused by the unprecedented circumstances of the pandemic, and the backlog
of operations that this has caused, as well increased demand for regular
services as we look to return to normal, and delays in discharges that Cornwall
Council is now working on reducing.
The recently announced NHS and Social Care NIC Levy will
also see more funds to ensure the NHS has the resources it needs throughout
this Parliament, including tackling the backlog of operations and funding the
3% pay-rise for nurses. It will also allow the Government to invest the largest
amount of any government to upskill the social care workforce, strengthen the
adult social care system and finally implement a solution to cap adult social
care costs.
Turning to housing issues, there is no doubt that we are in
a housing crisis in Cornwall, and I have made it a priority to address this
since the current session of Parliament first sat in June.
Along with my Cornish MP colleagues I am currently working
with the new administration at Cornwall Council to discuss further action that
can be taken to make the housing market fairer for local people including
potentially putting an additional council tax charge on second homes, piloting
new planning rules to restrict the use of “primary residences” for holiday
homes in areas which already have high percentages of second homes, setting up
a new brokerage to encourage second home owners to make their properties
available to long-term renters, and a crackdown on the illegal use of former
council homes as holiday lets.
Several of the proposals will require changes to primary
legislation to allow Cornwall to pilot measures which are not currently backed
by national law, and as MPs for Cornwall we look forward to working with the
new Ministerial team at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing &
Communities to progressing these for these for the good of the people of
Cornwall.
Finally, on creating more opportunities and jobs for our
young people, it is so important that we create the well paid, highly skilled
jobs that we need in order to help our young people stay in Cornwall, have
careers here and bring up their own families. I am pleased to have worked with
Cornwall College and the Government to secure funding for the refurbishment of
their St Austell campus, and have also worked hard to make the Spaceport
Cornwall project a reality, as well as with emerging industries such as lithium
extraction and geothermal to create new and exciting opportunities for our
children in the future.
I will be responding in more detail to those people who
replied to my survey, but in the meantime, it is really helpful to understand
your priorities for me as your Member of Parliament. The survey is still open
and if you want to respond to it, you can do so via my website
https://www.stevedouble.org.uk/st-austell-and-newquay-autumn-myplan-survey
