Dear All,
After a very hot and sunny day here in our bay it is time for my latest update.
My week started last Saturday with a Service of Remembrance for Cpl Jeremy Smith RM, who lost his life in the Falklands War. More on this below.
After the service I headed over to Preston Baptist Church for my regular weekly surgery (Top Left). Over recent weeks my surgeries have been busier as more people get in touch to ask for a face-to-face appointment. Given the attack on my colleague Sir David Amess last year we have taken some additional precautions at surgeries but continue to offer them as they are a vital service for residents.
Saturday evening saw me head over to Paignton Parish Church for a special concert by the South Devon Choir in aid of Torbay and South Devon NHS Charitable Trust and in memory of those lost or affected by the pandemic. The Choir did a wonderful performance of Fauré Requiem, made even more special by the fact the performers had only gathered that afternoon to prepare for it as part of a Signing Workshop designed to give anyone the chance to sing in a concert.
After the morning service at St Matthias, Cllr Hazel Foster and I were delighted to join the team at Upton Vale Baptist Church for a special afternoon tea. Those attending were Ukrainian Refugees and their hosts. It was good to talk with them about their travel to our bay and the welcome they have received. We also discussed some of the experiences they have faced since Russia launched its unprovoked attack.
Sunday evening brought an opportunity to reflect on how, despite the claims Vladimir Putin makes, he does not embody all things “Russian”. I attended a Service for Peace in Ukraine organised by Fr Paul Jones of All Saints, Babbacombe. Whilst I was pleased to be asked to do one of the readings, the highlight was a Sermon from Fr. Porphyrios of the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Community of St Pancras and St Sergius, Exeter. He gave a powerful Sermon in which he reflected on the history of religious persecution in Russia and how many Russian Orthodox Christians have spoken out loudly and publicly against the attack on Ukraine.
Monday morning saw me head up to London ahead of a busy few days in Parliament and at the Home Office, with Parliament sitting for four days this week.
The most notable part of the week in Parliament for me came on Tuesday when the Labour Party had an Opposition Day and I was at the Despatch Box responding to one of their motions (Top Right). A bit more on this below.
Wednesday saw me on the front bench again as the Home Secretary made a statement on the Rwanda Flight.
With tens of thousands of Ukrainian Refugees having now arrived in the UK attention is turning from visas to ensuring they get the support they need after arrival. A core part of this is ensuring adult refugees can quickly get a National Insurance Number so they can start work. Yesterday I joined the relevant minister from the Department for Work and Pensions for a visit to Tooting Job Centre Plus. During the visit we held a meeting with the team ensuring they can quickly get these sorted (Bottom Left).
I travelled home last night ahead of a busy day focused on our bay, starting with a surgery at The Windmill Centre in Hele (Bottom Right). It was good to not only have a busy surgery session, but to hear the activities taking place in the hall next door.
After this I headed to my office in East St for my regular monthly catch up with the Leadership of Torbay Council, followed by a meeting with a teacher looking to do more to promote mental health well-being for families.
Finally, this week marks 9 years since this update service started, with the first edition being sent out back in June 2013. In this time the number of households receiving it has increased ten-fold and I hope you find it a useful read each week.
This week’s update is below and includes:
Armed Forces Day Is Back, Levelling Up Bid, Devon Devo Deal, New Seafront Hotel For Christmas?, County Lines Crackdown, Police Officer Recruitment, Queensway Update, Train Tickets To Town With No Track, Opposition Day Debate, Arcadia Is Back, Kev’s Column: Naturally Inspiring and finally……Patrick for Mayor.
Armed Forces Day Is Back,
Tomorrow (Saturday 18
th June) sees the return of Torbay Armed Forces Day after a Covid related break.
Armed Forces Day is about thanking and recognising the whole armed forces community, including cadets, serving personnel, veterans and their families. Torbay Armed Forces Day is organised by the Veterans of Torbay (Torbay Armed Forces and Veterans Breakfast Club).
The event starts with a Veterans Parade leaving the Model Village car park at 11am (Veterans who would like to take part are asked to arrive in the Car Park from 10:30am). The parade will head along Higher Downs Road, then onto Babbacombe Downs Road.
It would be great to see lots of residents there to support and thank those on parade.
The Babbacombe Downs will be full of activities supporting various military charities, including military displays, music, plus food and drink stalls. The timetable for the day is as follows:
10am – 11am Military Music
11am Parade leaves Model Village car park
12pm Spires College Band
12.50pm Sandy Sparkle
1.30pm Samantha Montini
2.10pm Pipe and Drums of Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue
2.50pm Sandy Sparkle
3.30pm Samantha Montini
4.10pm Pipe and Drums of Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue
4.50pm Samantha Montini
5.30pm Sandy Sparkle
Over the last two years our forces have stepped up to support our community through the pandemic and are today on the front line in Eastern Europe supporting our NATO Allies. As we also remember events of 40 years ago tomorrow is a perfect opportunity to say thank you.
Levelling Up Bid,
This week it was confirmed a bid will be submitted to the second round of the Government’s Levelling Up Fund.
The bid will be focused on providing expanded port infrastructure at Brixham Harbour and grow-on space for electronics and photonics businesses in our bay.
If the bid is successful, the proposed expansion of the commercial port could see an annual £5m growth in the value of fish and shellfish landed in Brixham and support 150 new jobs. The development will provide a significant increase in operational space at the quayside for the siting of an extended fish market facility to take the extra capacity. It will also include additional quay space for the smaller distribution vehicles operated by the fish merchants, to help ease the present congestion at busy times. Torbay Council would benefit from increased revenue from the additional fish toll income.
The Levelling Up Fund bid was originally submitted under Round 1 last year but was unsuccessful, but Anthony and I are working to ensure this package is sucessful this time. The combination of support for our most traditional industry, alongside developing one at the cutting edge of technology would make a major difference for our economy.
Devon Devo Deal,
Devon is one of nine areas given provisional backing by the Government to make more decisions locally via “County Deal”, which would see some devolution of decision making from Whitehall.
This week Radio 4 interviewed the Chief Executive of Devon County Council who confirmed talks with Whitehall departments are now underway. Those involved are Devon County, Plymouth City and Torbay Councils, together with Devon’s eight district councils.
As Torbay’s MP I have urged participants in the talks to focus on what a deal will mean for local people on issues such as housing, skills training and transport, rather than what it means for local Councillors or political structures. This means any major reorganisation of democratic structures, such as having an elected mayor for Devon, or creating one overall council similar to Cornwall and Somerset, is highly unlikely.
It is possible that a County Deal for Devon could be finalised by the Autumn.
New Seafront Hotel For Christmas?,
There was some very encouraging news for our tourism sector this week as the Fragrance Group confirmed its two major new hotels on Paignton Seafront were on track for opening next year and one of them could even be serving food and drinks for Christmas.
It is a major boost for our bay only 4 months after the collapse of Construction Giant MIDAS meant a new contractor had to be found in order to finish the work. The hotels are expected to generate an extra £5 million a year for our local economy. You can read more on the Torbay Weekly website by clicking
here.
Separately the group has confirmed work to construct the new Corbyn Head Hotel will start in August. A start date has yet to be confirmed for work to build the new Palace Hotel, although work on a linked housing development is now underway.
County Lines Crackdown,
40 people have been arrested as part of a major investigation into County Lines gangs in Devon.
Working with the Project Medusa Team at Merseyside Police and the South West Regional Organised Crime Unit (SW ROCU), Police officers, staff and the Special Constabulary carried out a two-day proactive operation to target drug supply networks.
Over 14-15 June, a significant number of searches and activity was carried out across in Torquay, Paignton, Teignmouth and Newton Abbot.
A total of 40 people were arrested as part of the operation on suspicion of a range of offences including - possession with intent to supply class A and B drugs, being concerned in the supply of drugs, possession of an offensive weapon, money laundering, drug driving and driving whilst disqualified.
Project Medusa is an operation led by Merseyside Police involving a County Lines taskforce and Matrix vehicle enforcement team which was set up to tackle County Lines drug dealing and child criminal exploitation. They have provided an ongoing committed to supporting Devon & Cornwall Police.
It is great to see this action to crack down on those who bring drugs and wider criminality into our communities. You can read more and listen to comments for our local Police and Crime Commissioner Alison Hernandez, on the Greatest Hits Radio website by clicking
here.
Police Officer Recruitment,
Devon and Cornwall Police are recruiting now for Police Officers!
To find out more and start your application just click
here to be taken to the relevant part of their website.
This latest recruitment phase closes on 11.55pm on Thursday 14th July 2022.
Queensway Update,
Last week I mentioned I had been chasing for details on what progress was being made by Torbay Council with taking forward ideas to improve road safety on Queensway in Chelston.
This week I have received an update from Torbay Council:
"When we met at Queensway we discussed a range of issues including lining of the parking areas/delineation of the areas at the foot of the steps, the width of some of the side roads at the junction, the potential for additional lining double yellows or white were suggested on the corner of junctions, the potential for a single marked crossing is to be investigated along with moving the speed bumps. The Council will review through its highways team the potential for surface treatments and markings to encourage slower speeds from drivers along Queensway. The work to consider physical changes is ongoing.
While that review is taking place we have agreed to bring forward a road safety campaign intended to decrease the number of road traffic collisions and related fatalities and serious injuries across Torbay.”
In response I have queried what the timeline is for the work to consider making changes.
Train Tickets To Town With No Track,
For many years one Devon town was famous for having a railway station, but no track.
Dartmouth Station sold rail tickets and accepted freight, yet the rail head which served the station was the other side of the river in Kingswear, with a ferry between the two. The ability to buy a ticket from across the country to the town with no train line sadly ending in the 1960’s when the line was closed during the Beeching Era.
Now you can once again buy a train ticket to Kingswear (For Dartmouth) as part of welcome through ticketing arrangements between GWR and the Dartmouth Steam Railway and River Boat Company. Bookings for train tickets to Dartmouth are available until Sunday October 30 when the steam service ceases for the winter.
It is great to hear this news and it will be a welcome boost for tourism. You can read more on Devon Live by clicking
here.
Opposition Day Debate,
As mentioned above I was at the Despatch Box on Tuesday responding to an Opposition Day Debate.
Opposition Days are when the opposition gets to choose the subjects for debate, with up to 6 hours available. Normally they will pick 2 motions for a 3-hour debate each, but can lay a single motion for a 6 hour debate.
These motions can often be party political in nature; hence I rarely cover such debates in these updates as I have always operated them under a no party-political point scoring rule. Many of the debates are predictable in nature, eg no update reader would be surprised to hear the Labour Party does not think much of the Conservative Party’s policies and vice versa. This said there are other occasions when a productive debate on an issue is held, even if not every aspect of it is agreed by both sides.
The motions being debated will virtually always set out what the opposition party is calling for on an issue or subject. Yet this week the one on passports was different, rather than set out any ideas or call for a change or specific action, it simply attacked me as the Minister.
I was only too happy to reply to this and you will be able to tell why if you watch what I said in response on Parliament's website by clicking
here.
Arcadia Is Back,
A familiar sight in our bay during lockdown returned to our bay this week, the cruise ship Arcadia, giving three blasts on her horn as she arrived.
The skeleton crew and captain of the 11-deck vessel fell in love with our Bay because of the way local people welcomed them during an enforced 18-months stay.
The passenger ship which holds around 3,000 passengers returned to the Bay for the Jubilee weekend and returned again this week to the delight of ship-spotters. You can read more on Devon Live by clicking
here.
Kev’s Column: Naturally Inspiring
Every fortnight I write a “Kev’s Column” for the Torbay Weekly and you can read the latest edition by following the link below:
https://www.kevinjfoster.com/news/kevs-column-naturally-inspiring
and finally……Patrick for Mayor.
Ending on a lighter note Torbay may have got rid of the Elected Mayoral system in 2019, but in one part of our bay a campaign to get a new Mayor in post has emerged.
This campaign to create a “Mayor of Cockington” is very much focused on a candidate who has his feet on the ground, likes getting out in the community and is a regular at the Drum Inn, the pub at the heart of the village. He has also pledged to say a firm “neigh” to any plans which would harm the unique character of this special place.
You can find details of the campaign to make Patrick the Pony Mayor of Cockington on the change UK website by clicking
here.
That is all for this week and enjoy your weekend.
Best Wishes,
Kevin