It was great to visit Glebe School in Southwick on Friday and be grilled by a very enthusiastic group of Year 4 pupils on all things environmental and the EYE Project, following a very impressive set of letters about protecting the sea that they all sent me earlier in the year. I am amazed there is any plastic and litter left to pick up around Southwick Beach such has been the enthusiasm for beach cleans by this particular group of young people and their families.
I was particularly touched by the poem especially written by Rowan class reflecting the impact of climate change on the weather, titled ‘The storm is upon us, around us and through us. ’It certainly could not have been timelier given the tempests we have experienced recently where one day last week Shoreham had the highest recorded rainfall in the space of 24 hours of anywhere in the country.
In the evening I spoke at a meeting of a slightly more senior group of constituents at the North Lancing Residents Association AGM. We recalled how the Association was set up in the sitting room of the local councillors Carson and Carol Albury some 16 years previously in response to a particularly controversial planning application. The Association has gone from strength to strength and does a great job of representing the close-knit community with all sorts of local events including the recent scarecrow display, although controversial planning applications still feature significantly in their work.
Together with local councillors I will be helping out the Christmas appeal by the Fishersgate Community Hub brilliantly led by the tireless Jill Lennon. Jill is particularly after toys to provide present parcels for local families so if you would like to contribute actual toys of make a donation, please do let me know and we will be round to collect.
The roller-coaster work of the Boundary Commission continues having first proposed a big shake-up of boundaries in West Sussex with the East Worthing and Shoreham constituency reverting to the mix of coastal and downland communities that it traditionally included by spreading northwards into market towns and villages within the ‘Adur Valley.’ Now they have decided to reverse all that and abandon the welcome suggestion for Worthing to be reunited into a single constituency again. They also propose substantial changes which have not previously even been mentioned to neighbouring Arundel and Chichester constituencies instead with only 4 weeks to consult.
This cannot be right for such substantial changes to the important parliamentary boundary review process, and I would urge everyone to submit their own responses to the Boundary Commission as www.bcereviews.org.uk . You can see what I have written myself on my own website www.timloughton.com
