Out of the 100 towns earmarked for the Government’s High Street Fund Penzance has provisionally secured one of the highest amounts (28 towns on the list are to receive nothing at all). This is testament to our efforts to work together over sometime now in Penzance to understand the challenges we face (especially in the town centre) and identify how investment can help to address these. Penzance has reason to be proud of the tireless efforts of the many people who have focused their time on the agenda.
The £10.4 million announced will help us to make significant improvements to Penzance and will unlock other finance along the way I’m sure. In parallel with this effort the Towns Fund Boards in both Penzance and St Ives are finalising the investment ask of Government to be submitted by the end of January. Up to £25m is up for grabs in both towns and the year-long process has been both hard graft and informative as the work to ascertain how this money could be spent has evolved. You can follow progress and check out our priorities: www.stivestowndeal.org.uk and lovepenzance.co.uk.
Giving local communities effective control of how tax-payers money is invested locally is something we must get used to as the Government intends to use a similar model in distributing the £4 billion Levelling-Up fund and Shared Prosperity Fund. I’m most certainly up for the challenge as are our communities. Already I’m joined by focused minds identifying projects worthy of investment across West Cornwall ready for the next funding opportunity.
A casualty of the coronavirus outbreak is the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
This week all of the Chairs of cancer All Party Parliamentary Groups (I chair the Brain Tumour APPG) are meeting the Health Minister responsible for cancer to agree what the Government must do to ensure cancer patients receive the best care despite covid-19. Government must protect cancer services and specialists within the NHS from being stood down, fund greatly increased capacity to drive a catch-up plan (potentially 25% of patients have not been diagnosed or not had treatment), ensure cancer patients are prioritised for the vaccine and communicate clearly to people who are showing symptoms to make contact with their GP.
This is not an issue that can be ‘parked up’ until we beat covid-19. In relation to beating covid the rollout of the vaccine continues to increase at pace and the advice I want to reiterate is that those of the 31 million prioritised for the vaccine are to be contacted as soon as possible. I’m sure we all accept this is a massive nation-wide programme and will take longer than we might hope. By mid-February all those who we know would be at most risk of dying if they were to contract the disease will have been offered the first dose of the vaccine. This should greatly reduce anxiety, premature deaths and allow us to look more positively at how and when we can lift restrictions.
