Category: Wokingham and West Berkshire Issues

26 February 2016

 

Dear Mr Redwood

Thank you for your further letter of 18 January about the new road layout on the A329(M)/M4 Junction 10.

I note your observations about future capacity requirements on the A329(M) in light of the new housing developments.

The improvements to this junction were carried out under the government’s Pinch Point Programme to facilitate planned economic growth to improve traffic flow on the M4 by relieving congestion on the slip roads at Junction 10. We worked closely with WBC to develop and understand the impact of the growth proposals through the Local Plan process.

The improvements have successfully reduced observed queues on the M4 and associated safety risks. To address concerns relating to the junction improvements and the safe operation of the A329(M) we held a meeting with Wokingham Borough Council on 19 January. At the meeting an agreement was reached to install cameras to observe driver behaviour and undertake traffic counts. The results of this investigation will inform discussions with WBC to identify the feasibility and programme of any further improvements on the A329(M). The video survey and traffic counts are programmed to complete by spring 2016.

Our project sponsor, Ed French, will contact you once we have the monitoring results and have discussed proposals with WBC.

Yours sincerely

David Brewer

Executive Director

The Centre for Cities has recently produced its up date of how the UK’s cities are doing economically. They include Reading in their list. They combine urban areas in Wokingham Borough with Reading Borough for the purpose of their comparative study.

Reading is doing well. The wider urban area has the biggest stock of businesses outside London per 10,000 of the population. London is the most enterprising of all UK cities with 519 businesses per 10,000. Reading is in second place with 441.

Reading is in fourth place on average wages, at £619 per person. Economic output per person is £70,900 a year for each worker in Reading, compared to £73,400 in London. Reading is in second place on this measure.

Unemployment is down to 0.9% of the workforce, making Reading the sixth lowest urban area for unemployment. Reading is in fifth place for people having good qualifications, with 47.5% of the workforce having higher level certificates (Level 4 or above).

Reading is also one of the dearest places for housing, reflecting the good economic news. That is why we need to do more to promote affordable home ownership so younger people can get started with a home of their own.

Yesterday evening as Parliament is in recess I was able to go to the public meeting at Emmbrook School to discuss the Wokingham Northern Relief Road. The Chairman of the meeting was keen I should attend and listen, so I did.

The meeting was well attended. We heard a presentation from a Borough officer on the public response to the original consultation, which favoured Route B by a large margin, and on the subsequent changes the Borough has made to the route. Most of the questions and points made by audience members were critical of the changes to the preferred route, or were concerns about the route chosen for construction traffic.

The Leader of the Council, the Councillor responsible for the scheme, and local ward Councillors from Emmbrook were all present, so they all heard the range of points and criticisms made. The issues that came up all related to the planning powers and highways choices of the Borough, so it is good Councillors were there to hear objections or wishes for improvements. They can take this into account as they develop the scheme further and move towards seeking planning permission.

As MP I am ready to help the Council with applications for government funding once there is an agreed scheme with planning permission, where government money or assistance is needed.

Supporting Syria and the Region Conference (information supplied by the government)

Syria is the world’s biggest and most urgent humanitarian crisis. The UN estimates that 13.5 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance inside Syria, including six million children.

The UK has been at the forefront of the response to the crisis in Syria and the region since the start of the Syria war. That is why the Prime Minister decided that the UK should co-host the Supporting Syria and the Region Conference in London on 4th February, alongside Germany, Kuwait, Norway and the United Nations. The Conference brought together over 60 countries and organisations including 33 heads of state and Governments, plus non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the private sector and civil society.

The Conference raised over US$11 billion (£7.6 billion), the largest amount ever raised in a single day for a humanitarian crisis. $5.8 billion (£4 billion) was pledged for 2016, to meet immediate needs of those affected by the crisis. A further $5.4 billion (£3.7 billion) was pledged for 2017-20, which will enable partners to plan ahead and to meet longer-term needs. In addition, Multilateral Development Banks and donors announced a further $40 billion (£28 billion) of loans to refugee hosting countries in the region, some of which is on concessional terms, to increase access to sustainable lending.

The UK, once again, played its part. We announced that we would be doubling our commitment to the crisis – increasing our total pledge to Syria and the region to over £2.3 billion.

The Conference not only generated financial commitments, but also ensured a new approach to responding to protracted crises. Going beyond basic needs, it set ambitious goals on education and economic opportunities, to transform the lives of refugees from Syria and to support the countries hosting them.

Participants agreed that there should be no lost generation of Syrian children. Historic commitments with Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan will help ensure that by the end of the 2016/17 school year, all refugee children and vulnerable children in host communities will be in quality education, with increased access to learning for the 2.1 million children out of school in Syria. Furthermore, up to 1.1million jobs will be created for refugees from Syria and host country citizens in the region by 2018.

By doing this, we are investing in what is, overwhelmingly, the first choice of Syrian refugees: to stay in the region, closer to their home country and their families who are so often still in it. If we can give Syrians hope for a better future where they are, they are less likely to feel that they have no choice other than to make perilous journeys to Europe. This is the right thing to do for them, and for Britain.

Protection of civilians was at heart of the Conference. Participants condemned the continuing, intolerable levels of violence against civilians in Syria, and demanded that all parties to the conflict bring an end to the ongoing violations of both International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law. Participants committed to ensuring people inside Syria have access to safer healthcare, safer education, and that the most vulnerable, including girls and women, are supported.

Ultimately, only a political transition can end the conflict and fully guarantee the safety and security for all Syrian citizens. To this end, Conference participants agreed to give their full support to peace negotiations. They also agreed to work together, under the UN’s coordination, to plan for stabilisation and post-conflict peace building and recovery, including committing immediate resources in support of these efforts.

Looking ahead, the international community, refugee hosting countries, civil society and the private sector now need to see through and implement the commitments made at the Conference. We will work with key partners to review implementation, including at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul in May.

JUSTINE GREENING

I am grateful to those who came to my father’s funeral on Monday 8th February.
For those who wrote to me saying they could not make it but would like to remember him, I reproduce below my tribute to him at the service.

William Redwood was rooted in decency, buttressed by honesty. His gentle sense of humour and readiness to talk to people brought him many friends and acquaintances. His marriage to Amy ran as the golden thread through his adult years, bringing him both deep friendship and romance.

We meet today to celebrate his long and often happy life.He would be pleased to see you all here, and in his modest way pleasantly surprised.

He was born in 1925 in Ramsgate, an only child. As a young teenager his father’s illness and inability to work touched the small family with financial hardship. His education was disrupted by the outbreak of war, making him an evacuee to Stafford. There poor educational provision for the new arrivals persuaded him to leave school at the first opportunity, a decision reinforced by his generous wish to offer some financial help to his struggling parents. As soon as he could he volunteered for the Royal Navy, joining the crew of HMS Royalist, a cruiser. He saw action in the North Sea, off Naples supporting the Allied landings in Italy, and around the war torn islands of the Mediterranean. Sent home with ill health himself, he met Amy who was a Petty Officer in the Wrens at Portsmouth.

Married life started in a flat in Deal, followed by a move to Canterbury where he lived for much of his life. He made a crucial choice to work for East Kent Packers as their Chief Accountant and later as their Company Secretary. This enabled him to buy a home for his own small family of three. He enjoyed the rising prosperity of 60s and 70 s England, as fitted carpets, central heating, kitchen machines, a telephone and car arrived and became a normal part of his life.

His work with fruit suited him as he was a keen gardener. One of the features of Christmas was the arrival of special large comice pears which he reserved in the summer and got the experts at work to keep in a temperature controlled gas store so they would be mouth wateringly ripe on December 25th.

He weathered the shock of change when his long career there ended prematurely following a takeover. He spent his last working years happily assisting the Bursar of the Kings School Canterbury, where he enjoyed joining in the rhythms and events of a culturally active school.

Ever keen to retire, retirement lived up to billing for him. He revelled in a series of great cruises and holidays which took them to China and the USA, to Norway and down the Rhine.

In his later years he took an interest in modern English history and Politics. When his son stood for the leadership of the Conservative party he found his garden overwhelmed by journalists wishing to talk to him. In his methodical and friendly way he organised them into an orderly queue and gave each one time to answer their questions. He rifled through his carefully tended files to find relevant documents of recent family history for their delectation.

In his late years he and Amy moved to be nearer to their son, and settled in well and quickly with friends and contacts of John and new ones of their own.

Today we should say thank you for knowing William, and for the many acts of kindness and friendship he undertook. We should be happy that he achieved many of the aims he held. He would often say he had been lucky in his life and in his choice of wife. We should be glad that he was able to spend so many days with Amy in a remarkable partnership that meant they never spent a day apart, unless illness divided them as it has again today.

Last week at the request of constituents I met representatives of the Alzheimer’s society who have been monitoring standards of care in NHS hospitals. They have found the care to be very variable, and are rightly pressing the NHS to raise standards in all hospitals and care homes seeking to look after sufferers.

I agreed to assist and will raise these issues in my next meeting with the Secretary of State.In particular they want to see proper annual reporting on standards of Alzheimer’s care, with Monitor and the Care Wuality Commisssion properly engaged in Supervision.

The government has amended the local authority grant settlement in ways which help both Wokingham and West Berkshire Councils. I lobbied the Minister on behalf of our local Councils, and supported submissions they then made to the government for fairer treatment. Wokingham will receive an extra £2.1 m next year and West Berkshire an extra £1.4m as a result.

The government said in general terms: “There will be a transitional grant of £150 million in 2016/17 and 2017/18 to reduce cuts to councils with the sharpest reductions in government grant during the most difficult first two years, and the Rural Services Delivery Grant will increase more than fivefold from £15.5 million this year to £80.5 million in 2016/17. This ensures that the government funding gap per head does not grow in the year of the statutory settlement and means that alongside the transitional grant that is £93.2 million extra for rural areas compared with the provisional settlement in 2016/17.

There will be no negative grant for any council in 2017/18 or 2018/19. By 2019/20 100% business rate retention will have come in, informed by the Fair Funding Review. There will also be a £5 de minimis council tax increase allowed for the smallest most economical councils, and a consultation on uprating planning fees in line with inflation.”

I received this letter from Wokingham Borough Council:

28 January 2016

Dear John

North Downs Line through the Wokingham constituency

The Great Western Railway hosted a North Down Line at the Sofitel at Gatwick Airport on Friday 15 January 2016 which I attended to hear their Managing Director, Mark Hopwood, announce the GWR’s exciting vision to try to achieve electrification of that line, which services Wokingham, by December 2019.

The plan is to have infill 3rd rail electrification, line speed improvements to 90mph, to double the frequency of the Gatwick Airport to Reading service to 2 trains per hour from May 2017 with existing diesel units (although that looks likely to slip by a year because of the delay in the GW electrification) and, after electrification, replace them with electric trains and extend them through Reading to Oxford. To complement this would see the frequency of the stopping service that services, inter alia, Crowthorne doubled to 2 trains per hour frequency by December 2022 and be able to include stops at Winnersh Triangle to serve both the business spark and the Park & Ride facility.

GWR are hopeful that this can be achieved outside the formal and lengthy High Level Output Specification process but this will need the support of local authorities (with Wokingham Borough Council fully supportive) and our MPs which I do hope you will give.

GWR are also understood to be planning to hold a reception for MPs in the House of Commons in the middle of the year to brief you on their vision for this line which is the one showing fastest growth on the GWR network and I hope you will be able to attend.

Yours sincerely

Councillor David Sleight

I have talked to the Aviation Minister to remind him that we do not accept the replies of NATs and Heathrow, and wish to see the position restored to the pre 2014 one. He is having a meeting next week when he plans to raise this matter again.