The Mail Column: 22 February 2020
The last week was a parliamentary recess (that’s why there have been less annoying politicians on TV than normal) so I’ve used the time to catch up, get about on days when I normally can’t be in Barrow to meet people, and spend some time with my too-neglected family.
My daughter has perfected the guilt-inducing question of - “do you have to go to Big Ben... again?” - pitching it just at the right time. So it’s been great to spend a few days with her and slip back into the routine of bedtimes, nursery pick-ups and all the other parts of family life that you miss in this job.
Young Miss Fell’s 4th birthday fell during the election campaign, and so back in December I took a precious day off on a bitterly cold and drizzly day to take her to see Frozen 2 and have lunch at Ford Park. Her second go on the zip-wire there led to disaster and we ended up in Furness General for what turned out to be a broken collar bone.
She was treated incredibly well. The team there, from the front desk through to the nurse who assessed and calmed her were brilliant. I was struck at the time that it felt more like a cottage hospital (in a good way!) than a general.
And so this week, sitting down with Morecambe Bay Hospitals CEO Aaron Cummins, Trust Chair Mike Thomas, and Copeland MP Trudy Harrison, it was good to hear that many staff and patients consider it the same way - with high marks for care and support.
Last week the Trust received the £5m seed money for new facilities in both Barrow and Lancaster. Now they have to put together a business case for what improvements they want to make to their estate to better serve you.
£5m may not sound like a lot, but it’s the first step towards a substantially improved facility for our area. My mailbag is full of letters about Furness General and the NHS more widely, and this small investment is the first stage towards relieving some of the capacity issues, and ensuring that some of those services which are either unavailable here, or oversubscribed, can be provided locally.
The scale of the investment that would mean for our community would be enormous, with hundreds of jobs being created and a considerable work for local businesses in making that happen. It is an exciting time for Furness at the moment.
An island of two parts
We’ve been battered in quick succession by Storm Ciara and Storm Dennis. Thankfully, the damage in Furness hasn’t been as severe as elsewhere in Cumbria or even the rest of the country.
It has, however, highlighted just how vulnerable parts of Walney are, with flood defences overrun or not present at all. On the south of the island, in parts the road to the nature reserve was the only land visible above water in the worst of the weather.
Simon Mulgrew and Jamie Cox invited me over to see the damage for myself and discuss their hopes for greater flood protection, lest we see parts of the island impassible in poor conditions.
Flooding is pernicious and without adequate protections each flood will make the next worse and allow water to travel that little bit further. This threatens one of our greatest assets in the nature reserve, but also communities like Biggar, and even BAE, should the channel be impacted.
I’ll be reaching out to local residents over the coming weeks to make sure your views are heard and then will make representations to the MOD and wider government and start the campaign to get flood defences in place before Walney becomes an island of two halves.
