I’m sure we can all agree that we’ve had our fair share of frustrating and disruptive water issues in our area from flooding, cold impact to drought with repeated and prolonged outages. As we’re experiencing, yet again, a hosepipe ban, I’ve met with Rebecca Pow MP, the DEFRA water Minister. I raised with her in Westminster the ongoing infrastructure issues and the lack of resilience in our water supply – I’ve advised her this situation is not good enough. The Minister will be raising these and other issues again with South East Water.
To follow this, pleasingly, the Government has laid further new legislation before Parliament to strengthen environmental civil sanctions and provide the environmental regulators with the tools they need to hold water companies to account. The cap on monetary penalties will be lifted, so operators can now be fined unlimited sums of money for polluting our waters.
It was good to meet with Chief Nurse and acting CEO, of the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead. It was great to see the hospital in action, meet staff and see their newly completed refurbishments and hear their future plans. We are very lucky to have this healthcare facility and the PRH on our doorstep.
Keeping on a medical theme, Modality are holding three important face-to-face patient engagement events next week from 25th-27th July. On 25th July, the first in person engagement event will be held at The Haven Centre in Crawley Down from 6-.30pm-8pm. The second in East Grinstead on 26th July 6.30pm-8pm, location TBC and the third will be at the same time at Cyprus Hall, Burgess Hill, RH15 8DX. Patients need to register to attend the event via the Eventbrite link and I do urge anyone registered at a Modality practice to take part: https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/modality-mid-sussex-patient-events-july-2023-2302569
Last week I raised the consultation by Govia Thameslink to move staff in the traditional ticket offices to station concourses. If you’ve any comments, or know anyone who travels by train and uses the ticket office, please respond directly via Transport Focus’s website or email ticketoffice.GTR@transportfocus.org.uk by 26th July to get in your feedback.