Having had the privilege of serving as a junior Minister myself, I know the pressures on ministerial diaries, and in particular on those who lead government departments, so it was wonderful to be able to welcome the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to Leighton Buzzard. These visits only happen for a very good reason, and in this case it related to the breakthrough made on the 8th of March by lawyers working for NHS property services, who, for the first time in 35 years, have worked out how to release value from land owned by the NHS in the town to provide additional healthcare facilities and our health authority are now urgently scoping the expansion of general practice, community health, mental health, reablement and hospital outpatient services.
There has been a complete turnaround since February with the local and national NHS working together to get the town what it needs. I have a similar mission to do the same for Houghton Regis and I am delighted that the Grove View integrated health and care hub will open its doors in Dunstable to patients from Priory Gardens GP surgery on the 2nd of May. A range of other health and care services will be provided from there shortly. The Luton & Dunstable Hospital continues with its £168 million rebuild.
When I hosted our excellent new Chief Constable in Leighton Buzzard and Dunstable in February, he committed to making sure that the police would be regularly available to the public at advertised prearranged times in public places, such as supermarkets and the Bossard House police premises. This has started to happen and I am urging the police to make sure that it happens regularly and is widely advertised and not just on social media which not everyone has access to.
We have a problem nationally with potholes due to the severe winter conditions and locally a new contractor, Milestone has taken over and six teams are working flat out to fix them. I am pleased that the three which are dedicated to the south of the county have been in Leighton Buzzard, Dunstable and Houghton Regis this week. The government have also given Central Bedfordshire Council an additional £900,000 to fill potholes.
Houghton Regis has received an additional £595,000 to improve youth facilities in the Tithe Farm area. It was also good to see the new investment which has gone into the Dunstable Community Halls by the Bedfordshire rural communities charity. The Halls now regularly host Mind, the CBC Skills Academy, the Workers Educational Association, the University of the Third Age and many more important local groups. Continuing my outreach to local veterans, it was very good to be able to talk to the Royal British Legion breakfast club in Leighton Buzzard about the work which I do for the armed forces.
I was very pleased to see over 19,000 pensioners in South West Bedfordshire get a record 10.1% increase in their pensions last week. There has also been an additional £2.96 million given to the Central Bedfordshire Council household support fund to help people with cost of living pressures.