Claire Coutinho MP July Newletter
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Parish Newsletter July 2023
The summer season is well and truly here, which means looking ahead to the many wonderful fairs, fetes and summer festivities that make the most of the warm weather.
As I write this, I’m about to enjoy a weekend at the Horley Carnival and the Limpsfield Chart Fair, and over the Summer I’ll be at the Surrey Royal British Legion’s county event at Lingfield Park Racecourse and, of course, at the Edenbridge & Oxted Agricultural Show. I hope to see lots of you out and about in the coming weeks and months.
Residents in Smallfield are continuing to be let down by O2, who have still not fixed their broken telephone mast. Since residents first contacted me about the lack of service, I have been urging Virgin Media O2 to fix the problem. In February I wrote to their CEO to ask for a timetable for when normal service will be restored and whether customers will be entitled to compensation.
I have since been having conversations with the company, who have confirmed that they have boosted coverage signal from the masts surrounding Smallfield, and that delays are a result of the bureaucracy involved in getting permission to build a new mast on a different site.
I was very glad to see that the story was picked up by the national press recently. I will continue to apply pressure on Virgin Media O2 on behalf of residents who have not had access to a service they pay for for almost a year.
Our local farmers do a tremendous job keeping us fed and maintaining the beautiful landscapes that make our part of the world such a wonderful place to live. I was delighted that the Prime Minister held a Farm to Fork Summit at 10 Downing Street a few weeks ago, where he set out new support for farmers to produce more of our own food domestically and changes to regulations that will make it easier for farmers to diversify their income.
I recently held a meeting at John and Sally Nicholas’ farm in Tandridge, organised by the National Farmers Union and attended by farmers from across East Surrey. It was really useful to hear local perspectives on the Sustainable Farming Incentive which is a new way of supporting farmers with payments for things that contribute to the public good, like planting more trees and improving biodiversity. We also had a great discussion about how we can ensure fairness in the food supply chain to make sure we can keep food prices as sensible as possible for families at a time of high inflation. I’ll be taking their suggestions back to Defra Ministers.
I also want to celebrate a fantastic local school I visited recently – Moor House in Oxted. They’re a specialist school and college for children and young people with speech and language disorders, and I was given a tour of their brilliant facilities by some tremendously bright pupils.
Staff told me that pupils often arrive with real difficulty in communicating with both adults and their peers, but with dedicated support from the teachers and on-site speech & language therapists, Moor House helps these young people grow into confident and capable young adults. The school had a wonderful atmosphere and it was clear how much the students felt supported in their studies.
I have responsibility for special educational needs in my ministerial role, and I have recently been working on plans to set out best practice guides for early speech and language development in schools – so it was great to see a wonderful example locally.
The pupils also asked me some fantastic questions during our Q&A, including whether there are any aliens in Parliament – something I can neither confirm nor deny…
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