Dear All,

A line to say that I am very grateful to have been re-elected as our MP last week, with an increased majority of 12,339. To the 30,985 people who voted for me, I would like to say thank-you for your trust and support, which I will endeavour to repay with continued hard work for our area. I will try to work in all our community’s interests, whether you voted for me last week or not.

I hope that the decisive election result nationally means that we can move on from the divisive atmosphere of the past few years, and come together as a country. Extra Police, NHS and education funding are things that I hope everyone can get behind.

Locally, the overwhelming priority remains stopping what the council is doing to our area by passing indiscriminate planning applications. They are quite clearly not listening to us, and the only way to make them listen is to move to a Directly Elected Executive Mayor, which we can force via a petition and then a local referendum. We have around half the signatures needed already, and I will be working closely with residents in the New Year to get the rest. There is more information at www.democ.org.uk. This is being run by local Residents Associations and I am fully supporting them.

I will of course keep www.chrisphilp.com updated with news as it comes up, so please keep an eye on this and Facebook and Twitter.

In the meantime, have a peaceful Christmas and New Year.

With best wishes,