I recently received the below letter from Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, concerning the revocation of the regional strategy for the South East of England Plan. I warmly welcome this announcement which means that the top down Central Government targets for house building will be scrapped. It will give more responsibility to elected local councillors to decide how much development we need and where it should take place.
The local NHS consultation closes on 16 April.
To see a short and jargon-free summary and to comment online you can look HERE.
The proposals include changes to hospital services at Stoke Mandeville and Wycombe. There’s been a fair bit of coverage in the local media already but if you haven’t yet what is being suggested and want to have your say, do follow the link.
From Monday 12th April at 5.00pm Parliament was dissolved. This means there will be no MPs until after the General Election on 6th May. Until that time I will be campaigning for re-election as the Conservative Party’s Candidate for Aylesbury.
My Westminster staff are not allowed to work in the House of Commons during the election campaign though they are continuing to deal as best they can with constituency casework from their homes.
To find out more about the Conservative Party’s policies please visit http://www.conservatives.com/
There’s now a bit more news on timings. Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary, is scheduled to make a statement in the Lords at 11.30 am. His Commons Minister, Sadiq Khan, has just twittered that he expects to be repeating that statement in the Commons at 12.15 pm. The actual White Paper, with all the small print detail, isn’t expected to be available until after the Commons statement, perhaps at 1.00 pm.
Today we’re due to get the Government’s announcement about plans for a new high-speed rail route from London to Birmingham. I’m expecting an oral statement in the Commons in either the late morning or very early afternoon.
A lot of countries are building high-speed rail lines to link major cities. A fair number of my constituents will have used the TGV in France and other countries in Europe and Asia are pushing ahead with similar schemes and they clearly have important economic benefits. If they succeed in diverting travellers from roads and aeroplanes, they could have environmental benefits for the country too.
The problem for our area is that any route from London to Birmingham seems likely to go through the Chilterns. We’d suffer the environmental damage but, because the trains would not stop locally, we’d get no direct benefit.
I’ve not been given any advance details of the route. Our local councils have been consulted at officer level but have all been sworn to secrecy. Press leaks from the Department of Transport suggest that the government is looking at three options, each involving existing transport corridors.
One would be to follow the M40 corridor, either tunnelling under or skirting High Wycombe, then running along the A4010 through the Bradenham valley, going around Risborough and off towards Haddenham.
A second option would be to follow the line of the A413 past Chafont, Great Missenden and Wendover, going round Aylesbury to the West and then over towards Quainton.
A third would be the A41 corridor past Hemel Hempsted, Tring and Aston Clinton then up along the Herts/Bucks/Beds border.
Whichever the government proposes, we’d be looking at a 100 metre swathe of land that would be in addition to rather than taking over existing railway lines.
I’ll blog more when I have some news.
