Andrew Griffith, the Arundel and South Downs MP, held a ‘Meet Your MP ‘event at Arundel Town Hall on Friday.
Carolyn Kenney the Town Mayor hosted the evening which commenced with Andrew Griffith explaining to the audience his three key roles as a Member of Parliament: the first as a legislator-only Members of Parliament can carry out this role along with the passing of laws -emphasising the importance of challenging and scrutinising legislation and holding the government to account in the best interests of his constituents. Secondly, trying to influence how the government spends our money-whether this is on local infrastructure, spending on our local village schools or Adult Social Services. Thirdly, to work constructively and convene with different stakeholders and different levels of local authority and bring different bodies together such like Highways, planning and local landowners.
There was a multitude of national and local level questioning from the floor, Andrew Griffith responding to a query on pollution in the River Arun and the duties of water companies to be held to account and carry out the required upgrades in order to seal leaks in private and public sewer networks to reduce overflows and how there needs to be more focus on this and keeping our rivers clean.
There was discussion about the recent publication by the Regulator of Social Housing and its damning report on Arun District Council.Andrew Griffith explained how the District Council had failed to carry out one of their key functions which is to deliver safe homes ( Arun own three and a half thousand houses in the area) and they failed massively- by either not ensuring that all the homes had smoke alarms or if they had to ensure that they were regularly inspected. The MP spoke at length about the huge burden that is being placed upon the area with housing development, eight times the rate of London which has the infrastructure to support development unlike West Sussex.
Other topics that were debated with the MP was the level of local crime and policing , farming and insecurity with the one surviving Abattoir in the Southeast of England, Net-Zero and protecting our environment.
A member of the public raised with Andrew Griffith the challenges that the Elevenses community at Arundel Lido are facing. They meet every Monday at the Marquee for coffee and a chat but over time this group has grown too large to accommodate the Marquee and would like to have more than just a tent-the group now includes a range of activities and provides an important service to locals.
Following the public event Andrew Griffith said:
“It was great to be back in Arundel again and I was grateful to everyone who came along and gave up their time. Being able to speak directly to residents and give them the opportunity to hold me to account on a variety of topics often quite complex on matters both nationally and locally is key in my understanding and ongoing support for the community. I very much look forward to coming back in the near future.”
