It was a great day of debate on the EU referendum on Friday when Peter Bottomley and I pitched our cases on opposite sides of the argument in front of more than 1000 pupils and staff at 3 different schools in Southwick, Lancing and Worthing. It was particularly good to see such engagement with some particularly penetrating questioning from young people in such an important issue even though most of them could not vote yet.
I have at least 3 more public meetings coming up. On Friday June 10th Lancing Churches have a hustings at Lancing Methodist Church from 5pm. On June 11th and June 18th I will be holding ‘Talk To Tim’ meetings at St James’ Church Hall, North Lancing and The Shoreham Centre respectively from 2.30pm. No doubt the Referendum will feature highly but as usual I am happy to take any local issues from constituents.
One local issue which is exercising a lot of people in North Lancing is a proposal to use the Lancing Manor Ground and MacIntyres Field for the Great Run Local on consecutive Sunday mornings. Councillors Carol and Carson Albury and I have been approached by Friends of Lancing Ring and Lancing Manor Park understandably concerned about the impact on a sensitive environmental area mostly maintained by volunteers. Whilst I am sure the community run is a good idea there must be more appropriate places to hold it and we have approached Adur Council to look at alternative sites.
More bad news from the banks. Despite assuring me there would be no more closures after their Broadwater and Lancing branches shut their doors last year, HSBC have just announced that Shoreham is to close too, leaving no branches of HSBC in the whole of the constituency. The ‘world’s local bank’ seems to be getting more and more remote from its customers.
Our local rail service goes from bad to worse as GTR’s already appalling performance figures sink further under pressure from the latest industrial action and spate of staff ‘sickness.’ Behind our backs it also turns out that the Department for Transport has just relaxed the terms of its contract and didn’t think to tell even the local MPs like me receiving a flood of understandable complaints. We will be taking this up urgently with the Minister when parliament is back next week and we are meeting GTR the following week. I have posted my very ‘unimpressed’ letter on my website.