It was great to be out and about in our area last week, the last before Parliament returned to London after the summer. It is many years since I experienced that "back to school" feeling, but I am really looking forward to getting stuck in and making progress on things that matter to us locally.
Congratulations to Neroche Primary School whose new classroom is a fine addition to a lovely school getting great results - it was a pleasure to visit and to cut my first school ribbon. And con-gratulations to all who took part in the Combe St Nicholas community show. It was a pleasure to hand out such a wonderful selection of prize cups, for everything from flowers to photography and all the vegetables in between.
Thank you also to the Alzheimer's Society for organising a great "Memory Walk" through Ninesprings Country Park in Yeovil last Saturday. It was a pleasure to hand out the finishing medals for the walk, which was healthy and fun but also emotional for many who were remembering loved ones. Thanks also to the many four legged friends who made the effort too. One of them, a poodle called Edna, has been specifically trained to help people with dementia which is a great idea.
I met with the Area Development Manager with Highways England last week, and discussed near term temporary improvements that can be made to the Ilminster Bypass, including active average speed cameras, to keep people's speeds down. We are also working together on the programming for the dualling of the rest of the A303/A358 corridor and I am trying to find ways to bring as much of the work as possible into the current 5 year road plan period. He confirmed to me that the Government is fully backing the dualling of the whole corridor and the preparatory work is very much under way, so it was good to hear that from the agency that is in charge of delivering the project, and I intend to stay close to the process.
I was dismayed during the week to hear that South Somerset District Council has decide to take the position that it does not have enough housing land to provide for the amount of housing they have set themselves as a target for the next five years. They have abandoned the position they took last year on various sites and "windfall" sites being likely to come forward in the next five years, which was the only reason the Planning Inspector was able to pass the Local Plan in January.
This is very disappointing, because the direct consequence is that the Local Plan that has only existed for five months may be considered "out of date", therefore it may not apply, despite the £3 million of public money spent on it, not to mention so many people's time and effort. It is a great shame that this lack of attention to detail, which I put before the Council and the Inspector, has re-sulted in a situation in which speculative applications to develop willy nilly are now much more likely to be approved.
I am working hard this week to make sure that if we increase our accommodation for genuine asylum seekers from war torn Syria, there are suitable solutions for housing and helping them that don't disadvantage people in our own area. I have had an enormous amount of correspondence on this issue since the very moving photo of a young refugee whose parents had tried make it from Turkey to Greece was published. I feel that we must address the issues in Syria and neighbouring countries first and foremost, and not do anything that could have an unforeseen human consequence in terms of encouraging dangerous journeys, and I will be supporting the Government in trying to put together a balanced package which properly grasps these difficult issues.