Mail Weekly Column: 26 June 2021

I was delighted that Barrow Council submitted their bid to the Government's Levelling Up Fund last week. The scheme is ambitious and much needed. It includes exciting plans to transform the market hall, opening it up, and providing a shared entrance with the Forum. There will be a new soft play area for families, a food hall, and new units to help establish and grow incubator businesses. A Pocket Park will lead from the back of the covered market to Dalton Road, to encourage an increase in footfall and help to get our High Street and retail economy back on its feet. Alongside this, the bid covers improvements to transport links, with buses stopping in front of the Town Hall rather than behind.

It's a really compelling bid, and I was glad to give it my approval and send a letter of support to Ministers to make the case. This week I've been lobbying on the cause and will continue to do so - the plan would make an enormous difference to our town and would complement the £25million Town Deal which was awarded recently.

On Thursday I visited Church Walk Primary School in Ulverston with the British Council. The school has been paired with another in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and won a British Council International School Award for the students’ work on this Connecting Classrooms project. It was great to hear the pupil's talk about the benefits of this scheme first hand, from sharing cultures to leaning about education overseas, and deepening their understanding of the world.

Friday began with the National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast. This took me to St Paul’s Church in Barrow where I was delighted to meet church leaders from different faiths across Furness. After the breakfast it was really enjoyable to chat with them about their congregations, our shared aspirations for our community, and to hear about the incredible work they do supporting not just their congregants but also the wider community too.

Later that same day I visited Cumbria Crystal in Ulverston. This is an amazing place, and a great example of the incredibly skilled businesses that we have hidden away here. It is the last producer of completely hand-blown and hand-cut, lead, luxury English crystal in the United Kingdom. Its products have been featured in Downton Abbey, James Bond films, and are used in many of our embassies around the globe. I really enjoyed seeing their skilled artisans at work and watching them produce such beautiful pieces. It was also a reminder of the breadth of skilled businesses that we possess in our community. They fly a very visible flag for Furness and take a well-earned pride in doing so.