In his latest blog for Caerphilly Observer, UKIP’s South Wales East AM, Mark Reckless, discusses local surgeries and fighting for the Right To Buy scheme.
Local office
The past month has been a busy time for myself and my South Wales East colleague David Rowlands. We have now officially opened our new regional office in Pontypool. The opening was very well attended with Douglas Carswell MP kindly doing the ribbon cutting honours for us.
I cannot stress enough how useful and important this office will be to the people of South Wales East. It is accessible for many in Caerphilly borough and it is our office in the region where you and your fellow constituents can come and try and resolve issues you may have.
Primarily we can help with issues which are part of the Welsh Assembly’s powers: housing, education and health are some of the main issues. But we will also try and help with other issues, even if we are just able to point you in the right direction of who can help. Our office is open Monday to Friday and we are open to all our constituents in South Wales East. Either David or I will generally hold a surgery on Fridays and we will try to help all of you to the best of our ability.
Right to Buy
Away from the office opening, there is been a great deal of activity within the Assembly itself. Labour has brought forward its plans to abolish the Right to Buy and Right to Acquire for council and housing association tenants.
My UKIP colleagues and I will be opposing this. It is not right that Labour’s solution to their failure to build new social housing is to deprive thousands of Welsh people the dream of owning the house they have called home for so long.
Many residents in Caerphilly have benefited from the Right to Buy over the past 30 years as well as nearly 140,000 households nationally. It is the aspiration of many to own their own home I want to defend this aspiration.
Good news that UKIP now has a regional office. This will, I’m sure, be a very useful facility for all in South East Wales who need a direct input to the Welsh Assembly but do not wish to talk with their constituency AM.
Of the SE Wales constituency seats seven out of eight are Labour. This is, in my view, an imbalance. I’m sure that Mark Reckless and Dave Rowlands will be able to offer a useful; alternative that the outdated first past the post arangement where everything in Wales has to pass muster with Labour politicians. People vote for many different parties, or increasingly don’t vote at all, but we all need political representation, from time to time.