My week ahead, 8 - 14 June 2015

Monday 8 June, 5pm – Labour Group campaigning

Thursday 13 June, 10am – campaigning in East Ipswich

This week we had the first North East Area Committee of the civic year and I was honoured to be elected to chair the committee for a further year.

We have had a number of major successes in the North East, but there is plenty still to do. One of our success stories has been the Active Lives project that we helped fund. They have been providing fitness sessions for some of our more senior residents. The sessions have been held at Dundee House but they have become so popular that this week they are starting a second session at the Rushmere St Andrew village hall.

At the meeting last week we agreed to fund an excellent project that will see two local primary schools work with Copleston School and the charity Eastfeast to help them set up their own gardens and I hope we can do even more work with all our local schools over the next 12 months.

We are often accused by local Tories that all we do is moan when it comes to discussing the state of education in the town, but what they can’t argue with is the fact that the Tory County Council have let our children down badly with the way they have let education standards slip so badly. The Tory Government have also not helped, free schools under the coalition and now the forced academisation proposed by the new Tory Government, to be honest with that latest policy all they are doing is making public what has been going on in places like Ipswich anyway. But how this latest policy will help Ipswich schools I do not know as three of our failing schools are already academies.

I am sure Mr Gummer will put some spin on it! But we are not just going to moan what we will be doing is supporting our schools and great projects like the garden project through funding from the North East Area Committee. Let us just hope the Tory County Council, the Tory Government and Ben Gummer also start to support our young pupils rather than just try and impose plans that are just about saving money.