Parliament has been in recess this week, but the business carries on and I have had a number of meetings in Westminster during the early part of the week. It has also been an opportunity to catch up with a lot of correspondence.
This week I was glad to see that Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale will be receiving over £1.1 million of funding to help projects that support rough sleepers. So, I was especially pleased to visit Brentwood in Middleton who are helping homeless people and others who are disadvantaged or socially excluded or under threat of Homelessness. John and Bev and the whole team at the centre are incredibly passionate about what they do and It was nice to see how this local project is helping people in some of the worst circumstances.
It’s good to be able to report that we are on track to deliver on our target to recruit 6,000 new police officers by March 2021, against our commitment to recruiting 20,000 more over 3 years. Here in Greater Manchester, that means 193 more officers fighting crime and keeping our communities safe. This is particularly good news following on from reports of anti-social behaviour that my office is currently dealing with in the Heywood area.
With Remembrance Day approaching I was very grateful to the local Royal British Legion, especially John and David who assisted me in purchasing wreaths. I always like to support the local legion so that they can keep supporting people here. The volunteers do an extremely important job and work tirelessly to make sure that a wide range of support is available.
As we look towards moving into four weeks of lockdown in England my team and I are working extremely hard to answer the many questions that people have about how the new restrictions will affect them, their family, job or businesses. I understand that these changes are again creating uncertainty so I want to thank people for their continued efforts to observe these necessary measures and help us to protect everyone and especially the NHS from the effects of coronavirus.
If you have a concern or issue that I can help with please email me at [email protected] or call my office on 01706 538 262.
