I was delighted to be able to visit four local businesses this month. I never forget that it is businesses like these that enable workers to feed their families and the Government to get the tax revenue we need to pay for all of the public services we care about. The new Lidl warehouse will employ 1500 people when at full capacity and is recruiting at the moment. They have done so much to help with the cost of living pressures.
Arnold White are responsible for building both the tallest and the most powerful wind turbines in England as well as an electric vehicle charging station at Checkley Wood. The Online Tasting Company is a start up which has moved to Leighton Buzzard and has great plans for the future to enable people to sample different wines in a much more environmentally sustainable way. I am working to help them grow. Baileys Travel in Waterbourne Walk stood by all their customers through the pandemic and have earned the loyalty and a lot of repeat business as a result. It takes a lot of courage and commitment to start and run businesses like these.
I am also working to help make sure that Universal Studios choose Bedfordshire, rather than anywhere else to build a new theme park, this will create huge job, business and infrastructure opportunities throughout the whole of Bedfordshire.
We’ve just come to the end of apprenticeship week and it was wonderful to see Central Bedfordshire College holding true to their commitment to provide more engineering apprenticeships in Leighton Buzzard to add to the ones in Dunstable and Houghton Regis. I also highlighted the National Grid apprenticeship scheme on a visit to the substation south of Leighton Buzzard and welcomed an apprentice to the House of Commons from The Picture House.
I’ve been lobbying for changes to the National schools funding formula to be fairer to Central Bedfordshire as well as supporting improvements for children with special educational needs and disabilities. I visited the Edwin Lobo Centre and I’m working with health ministers to get more clinicians to choose community paediatrics as a career.
I’m also working to get the Bidwell West primary school built, a larger police footprint in Houghton Regis and expanded primary care there as well as in Leighton Buzzard. It was also good to welcome the new ambulance Patient Transport Service for the whole of south Bedfordshire to Dunstable.