That’s why I am delighted to hear that they have teamed up with Dereham Football Club to raise awareness of their work.
Next season, Dereham FC will feature The Daisy Programme’s logo prominently on their first team home and away kits, as well as their tracksuits. Members of the club’s academy will also receive domestic abuse awareness training to help start a wider conversation around the topic.
This is a great partnership to see – the likes of which we want to see much more of! Especially given the pandemic of domestic abuse that has been triggered during the Covid crisis.
To learn more about The Daisy Programme’s work, please visit the website here
To read more about the charity’s partnership with Dereham FC, please visit here
The past week or so has been worrying times for Attleborough – with over 100 staff at the Banham Poultry site having tested positive for Coronavirus.
That’s why I am delighted that Norfolk has finally been designated a Fast Track and Trace County to help ensure we contain the outbreak.
This should have, of course, happened 10 days ago. It’s a reminder of how centralised our NHS and system of Government still is.
My latest interview with BBC Radio Norfolk can be found below – along with links to some of my previous work to date.
Relevant Links
(Please note that there have been a number of articles in the EDP on this issue over recent days. All can be found at their website: here)
Making sure every pupil in our area gets the skills they need to succeed is vital to the long-term prosperity of our region.
That’s why, since becoming the MP for Mid Norfolk back in 2010, I have done so much work with our great local schools and their teachers, as well as local charities and youth groups, on projects aimed at increasing the opportunities of our region’s youngsters.
(For example, through the not-for-profit The Norfolk Way social enterprise that I helped set up, I launched The Norfolk Innovation Awards and set up The Norfolk Way Enterprise Bursary Scheme to recognise youngsters excelling in STEM subjects at school and give them opportunities in the associated sectors that are so well-renowned in our great county. To learn more, please visit The Norfolk Way website here. I’ve also supported school initiatives like Dereham Neatherd’s successful bid to become a National Centre for Computing Hub (see more here), among many other projects)
The Norfolk Reading Project is a fantastic local charity established back in 2015 with the aim of helping schools improve literacy standards in the county.
They do this by recruiting and training volunteers to visit schools and listen to children read on a 1-1 basis. The service is completely free to the schools involved and gives local youngsters additional opportunities to practice and improve their reading.
Currently, the Project has over 150 trained volunteers helping out in over 50 Norfolk schools. The popularity of their work is rising however and the Project are looking for more volunteers who are willing to give up their time and be trained.
If YOU would be interested in supporting the Project, please do reach out to them via the details below!
The past few days have been worrying times for Attleborough – with over 100 staff now at the Banham Poultry site having tested positive for Coronavirus.
That’s why I remain firmly focussed on this issue and am calling for a proper, locally-led Track and Trace operation to be put in place ASAP to ensure that the outbreak is contained and not allowed to spread to the wider community and throughout our region’s farming and food processing industries – key components of our local economy.
My Quote to the EDP today…
“The Covid outbreak in staff at Banham Poultry has highlighted real issues with the Track and Trace system being run centrally from London by the NHS.
Tracing factory staff in our food processing sector – often low paid, overseas agency staff living in hostels cheek-by-jowel with workers in other plants – needs local knowledge.
To prevent infection spreading to other factories and towns, we need to trace, test and track all 800 Banham staff and their close contacts much more quickly.
That can’t be done with an APP or by NHS staff in London sending emails. It needs a team of local council staff and volunteers knocking on doors.
Louise Smith, the Head of Public Health in Norfolk, and our local Norfolk Public Health officers did a brilliant job stopping a pandemic in our care homes. They and local councils should be running track and trace. Not an NHS unit in London.”
Relevant Links
- My previous web-stories on this issue can be found: here and here
- Today's (3rd September) EDP article
- Tuesday's EDP article
(Please note that there have been a number of articles in the EDP on this issue over recent days. All can be found at their website: here)
The past few days have been worrying times for Attleborough – with almost 100 staff at the Banham Poultry site having now tested positive for Coronavirus.
That’s why, over the past week, I’ve been liaising closely with Public Health England, Norfolk County Council, Breckland Council and the New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership, as well as Ministers at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and pushing hard for a proper Track and Trace plan to contain the outbreak, avoid the spread of the virus to other communities and throughout Norfolk’s farming and food processing sectors, and prevent a wider lockdown.
Despite this, reports over the weekend that the Track and Trace response to the outbreak was slow, bureaucratic and overly-centralised continued.
The lack of proper Track and Trace following the outbreak amongst workers in the Norfolk poultry sector is potentially catastrophic to our vital local food industry & economy.
Norfolk is home to thousands of low paid workers in poultry & pork factories, many of whom live in hostels. All 800 staff at Banham and all their close contacts need tracing and testing. Urgently.
We should have hundreds of public health officials and volunteers out with clipboards this weekend knocking on doors. Every day the risk rises.
If this ends up with a pandemic and lockdown of Norfolks food businesses and towns like Attleborough, Thetford & Dereham there will be serious questions to answer about how this was allowed to happen.
We need a much more urgent local operation led by our local councils & local public health officials.
This morning’s emergency meeting provided some reassurance on the urgency of local Track and Trace now being taken, whilst also highlighting the problems & ongoing challenges which need sorting urgently:
1. Approx 1/3 of the staff who tested positive still not traced
2. Those who have been traced are concentrated in Yarmouth, Thetford, Attleborough and King’s Lynn
3. Urgent work is now being done by local councils to trace the outstanding staff who have tested positive, and their close contacts: likely to be approx 150
4. The tracing of workers in the food processing sector is complicated by locating often low paid overseas and agency staff, low cost accommodation & cultural barriers.
5. The Track and Trace system, run by NHS, is too centralised: Norfolk is still not authorised by NHS to run its own Track and Trace system.
6. We all agree this requires urgency & pace to prevent wider contamination across the food sector.
Relevant Links
(Please note that there have been a number of articles in the EDP on this issue over recent days. All can be found at their website: here)
It’s worrying times in Attleborough as Banham Poultry is asked to shut down a large part of its site in response to an outbreak of Coronavirus – to prevent a wider outbreak amongst workers both there and across Norfolk.
That’s why I am in close contact with the company, local councils, Public Health England and Government Ministers and officials to push for:
- A rapid Track and Trace operation to contain the outbreak and avoid a wider lockdown
- Compensation to help Banham Poultry, their suppliers and other companies in the farming and food processing sector take tough steps to protect the rest of us
- Help for vulnerable staff
My full statement can be heard here:
One of my key missions since becoming the MP for Mid Norfolk has been supporting our local town and village pubs – which play such a key role at the heart of our communities and rural heritage. So often they are at the centre of local innovation, and they provide a whole host of vital functions that keep our towns and villages thriving and vibrant.
That’s why I am so delighted to be supporting the efforts of Gressenhall residents as they look to save their beloved pub, The Swan.
The Gressenhall Community Enterprise (CAG) are hoping to raise £230,000 through the sale of shares in the project – and YOU can now buy those shares which are worth between £50 and £25,000. The CAG then hope to raise an additional £120,000 through social investment loans.
All of the moneys raised will then be used to buy the pub and return it to its former glory.
To learn more about the project, please visit the recent EDP article here and the brilliant Save Our Swan website here
(To see my previous web-story on this hugely worthwhile project, please click here)
Pubs are often at the very heart of our communities and rural heritage, playing a key role in keeping our villages and towns vibrant.
That’s why I was delighted to visit The Lodge Pub in North Tuddenham last year to see first-hand how they, as part of the ‘Pub is the Hub’ initiative, were combating the trend of community shops fading away by running their own community shop from their premises – a massive boost for North Tuddenham, the many communities that surround it and the pub itself.
Now The Lodge is up for the Best Pub Shop award (as part of The Great British Pub Awards) – having provided a key service over the past few months of lockdown. This is testament to the great work being done by the owners Vikki and Gavin Hunt, and their brilliant team – and a wonderful example of a local community doing all it can to cater for local residents. We must do all we can to support our local pubs and innovative enterprises like this.
Well done to The Lodge!
For further information and a link to where you can show your support for The Lodge by voting for them, please do visit the EDP article here
To see more about my previous visit to The Lodge, please click here
Thank you to the many schools, teachers, pupils, parents, governors and worried constituents who have contacted me in the last fortnight about the looming exam results shambles.
With a daughter due to start at University this autumn and a son in Sixth Form, I hugely understand and share the concern at the shambolic mismarking of 40% of the countries exam results, and have been urging Ministers to sort it out and do the right thing by accepting teacher assessed grades instead of relying on an untested bit of software developed by the Department for Education.
I’m appalled by the level of avoidable confusion, anxiety, delay and chaos caused to millions of pupils, families, schools, teachers and people involved in education, and that’s why I very much welcome the Government’s U turn. It’s not before time.
Hopefully this will now mean that the majority of those affected can move on and start to plan ahead with confidence.
Obviously I’m no longer a member of the Government and am hugely frustrated that it has taken Ministers so long to sort this out.
I regret to say that this catalogue of errors in this exam shambles has been hugely damaging to trust in the Department for Education and No10 Downing Street:
1. Mis-assessing 40% of pupils
2. Causing millions of pupils, families, teachers and people in education avoidable agony
3. Stubbornly refusing to accept any problem
((When it was *obvious* to all of us beyond Westminster that there was a looming problem and an obvious solution))
4. The saga has wasted valuable time this summer which is needed helping pupils catch up with lost lessons, sort out post GCSE and A level plans, fix the Further Education and Higher Education places confusion and help avoid COVID19 leaving a generation suffering long term.
5. Most seriously of all, to me, is the injustice of pupils in the least privileged schools being most discriminated against.
As a One Nation Conservative I believe we should be looking to help ensure that children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds have MORE chance to access the life-changing benefits of great education.
So.
I’m pleased that the Government has finally taken the right decision.
But very sorry it has taken this long.
Rest assured I will continue to raise concerns with Ministers. Please don’t hesitate to send in any further / future problems.
To see my most recent work on this issue, please see links here to:
1. My interviews yesterday afternoon on why this U turn was needed:
Times Radio: https://youtu.be/BToeOQnjzGc
BBC Radio: https://youtu.be/AcpkWfxluy0
Please see my latest video below, reporting back on my work in Mid Norfolk.