Happy Easter to all my constituents across East Grinstead, Uckfield, and the villages!
If you’re lucky enough to have this time off work, I do hope you’re having a fabulous time joining one of the many, many local events taking place in EGU and may the hope and promise of Easter fill everyone with peace, happiness, and joy that continues throughout the year. And a big thank you to all those working during this holiday across our vital services and hospitality - do enjoy your break when it comes.
I popped into the Mug Tree, East Grinstead, earlier this week and had a quick coffee between meetings – a reminder to stay and shop local! I’m also regularly visiting Weirwood and always pop into their lovely café with an even lovelier view. I met with a local farm who run a feed business and are seeing costs rising with business rates bills landing on doorsteps and all local spend makes the difference to protecting jobs and livelihoods.
If you keep up to date with my website, you’ll already have seen my recent statement on the water situation in our area. The way we live is different and our needs are growing and water stress is now a fact of life.
We experience repeated water outages and pressures around water pipe connectivity, bulk sharing contracts, our Reservoirs are under pressure with leaks and burst pipes, aging infrastructure and treatment works, huge increases to our population and housing stock, changes to how and where we work (WFH) and climate change.
As well as households, our rural businesses, farms, vineyards, garden centres, nurseries, growers and small holdings all depend on water to function and thrive. Although I do understand some works from Southern Water have commenced at Weir Wood and their plan with South East Water is vital while protecting the important community and leisure uses both there and at Ardingly reservoir.
I'd like to reassure residents that I am acutely aware of these issues, and I’ve been working on them and discussing it with stakeholders, SE Water amongst them, addressing our water scarcity, supply and resilience in the long term. Please see my full statement here: https://www.mimsdavies.org.uk/news/mims-davies-mp-statement-water-0 as well as my vital Parliamentary Petition trying to ensure businesses are properly compensated following the outages - please add your names and crucially your voice - https://www.mimsdavies.org.uk/mims-davies-mps-petition-business-compensation-south-east-water
As we know all too well, potholes are a huge problem, not just in our constituency, but around the country. The weather, historic road surfaces and lack of motorway and dual carriages where we are living with roads built for horse and cart mean that our tyres are being wrecked and the pressure on councils is acute this spring once again.
This month, my boss Rt Hon Kemi Badenoch MP announced the Conservatives National Pothole Patrol. This is a new fleet of road-repairing machines which could be deployed directly to fix potholes. To get Britain working again, we have to fix Britain’s roads, and we are determined to do something about it this ongoing scourge.
The abundance of potholes is always one of the top 5 concerns for my residents. Not only do we need them fixed, especially in our constituency and area, we need them to be fixed properly - and stay fixed! Please do remember to report them through the county council website when you see them! My casework team are always helping with local matters, but what is always key too is reporting issues directly.
Happy Easter and enjoy some rest and chocolate - I am planning just a little, I do promise.
