Welcome to my latest newsletter, I hope you are well. As we approach Christmas and the New Year, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on some of the areas I have been working on for our community during what has been a very busy year - you can read all about my work this year below.

As well as being full on as an MP, I was blessed with the arrival of my beautiful baby boy back in May, and it is fair to say that he has been keeping myself and my husband on our toes since then!

As ever, please do not hesitate to let me know if there is anything I can help with, or if you would like to speak to me at one of my upcoming surgeries, which I am holding across the constituency. 

I also wanted to take this opportunity to wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas! I hope you get to spend some much-deserved time with your friends and family over this special time. I will be marking the birth of Jesus Christ with my family and hoping to relax but this year I am cooking so hopefully it doesn’t go wrong - will get some pizzas in just in case 😉

Attending Local Village Fetes!

In the summer I always try and spend as much time as possible out and about attending and manning a stand at as many fetes as I can. This year that included fetes in Staverton, Semington, Melksham Hospital, Bowerhill Primary School and Melksham Food and River Festival.

Running Democracy Workshops

I have held many democracy workshops throughout the year to many local primary schools including Shaw Primary School, Forest and Sandridge C.E Primary School, The Mead Primary School in Hilperton, Bowerhill Primary School, Abbeyfield School, Melksham Oak, Aloeric Primary School, Shaw CE Primary School, Staverton Primary School, Fitzmaurice Primary School and many more.

Holding Surgeries Across The Constituency

Over the past year I have held many surgeries right across our constituency, including street pop-up stands and booked appointments in Bradford on Avon, Melksham, Monkton Farleigh, Bowerhill, Winsley and Chippenham just to name a few.

Helping Local Businesses!

Throughout the year I have visited a wide range of businesses from our community, including Hitachi in Bradford On Avon, to Stonegate Egg Farm here in Lacock. I have visited over 50 businesses this year and have corresponded with hundreds more, as well as recently organising and chairing a Business Leaders Round Table in Leigh Park Hotel, Bradford On Avon, where I very much look forward to hosting another one in 2024. If you are a local business leader and you are interested in attending, please do get in touch.

Cutest Christmas Pet Competition 2023!

I have launched my competition to find the Cutest Christmas Pet from the Chippenham Constituency! All pets are welcome, whether you have a dog, cat, horse or another animal friend! 🐶🐈🐴     

The winner will receive a certificate plus a voucher for Natural Treats Wiltshire who have kindly sponsored this Christmas event. 

The theme is Christmas and/or New Year, so it would be great if your picture was themed, but you can enter a ‘casual pet’ picture too. You may enter as many as you like, but only alive pets please. 

To enter, follow this link (https://www.michelledonelan.co.uk/cutest-pet-competition) to fill in and return the form, with a photo of your pet, to [email protected]. 

The deadline for submitting an entry is 9am on Tuesday 2nd January 2024. 

I will then publish the shortlist for the public to vote to crown the winner! 

Leading a New Government Department!

It was a real privilege to be asked by the Prime Minister back in February to serve as the first ever Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology. Since then, I have been determined to drive our mission to make the UK a science and technology superpower forward; from keeping young people safe with our world-leading Online Safety Bill to delivering on our superfast broadband rollout right across the country, I am incredibly proud of everything the Department has achieved in the last ten months.

Pub of the Year Competition Winner!

🍻 Back in August it was fantastic to welcome Leader of the House and Cabinet Minister Penny Mordaunt MP to The Market Tavern in Melksham to congratulate them on winning my Pub of the Year 2023 competition! 

🏆 After a huge 2200 votes across two rounds The Market Tavern were a very worthy winner, so it was great to officially award them the trophy, which was kindly supported by Dick Lovett BMW in Melksham. 

⭐️ Paul, Sue, Rob, Lorraine and the whole team at the Tavern have done a huge amount of work for the community since opening 2 years ago, and Penny was very impressed by the pub itself and all of their hard work. 

🏅The competition was all about celebrating all of our local pubs right across the constituency, so please do continue to support them as much as you are able to over Christmas and into the New Year.

Supporting Local Healthcare

We know that there are significant challenges facing our healthcare service, so we are doing a huge amount of work and investing more money than ever before to clear the backlog caused by the pandemic and make sure that people get the treatment they need. Throughout the year I have consistently pushed for additional investment and progress, helping to secure 👇

⏩ Just over £3 million for speeding up local discharges and increasing bed capacity

🗣️ £1.8 million for local mental health services

🦷 £4.7 million for improving access to dentistry in the South West

🏥 £5.67 million for the Royal United Hospital in Bath

💙 Over £1 million extra for drug and alcohol treatment in the area

👩‍⚕️ Campaigning for additional investment in Melksham and Chippenham Community Hospitals, including establishing my Melksham Hospital Steering Group

✔️ Running my Local Healthcare Survey to hear as many of your thoughts and experiences as possible, and raising this directly with Ministers and the Integrated Care Board who manage the local NHS budget

📣 Pushing for improvements for those facilities locally which are not delivering for residents

Some of the Government measures introduced nationally include👇

📈 Investing more money than ever before in the NHS

↗️ An Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan, to help reduce wait times, improve experiences for patients, and tackle the unprecedented demand facing our health service

🩺 A commitment to offer same day GP appointments for urgent conditions and ending the 8am rush

💷 £500 million Adult Social Care Discharge Fund to increase hospital capacity

💊 Expanding pharmacy services with £645 million to reduce demand on GPs and hospitals

🥼Changes to NHS pension rules to retain senior clinicians

We are already seeing progress so far with the number of NHS patients waiting more than 18 months for treatment reduced by 90% and paramedics reaching 90% of the sickest patients within 15 minutes.

We do of course know that there is more to do so people get the treatment they need, and locally I will continue to push for additional investment in our services and raise the issues you are experiencing.

Free Training for Local Businesses!

🧑‍💻📲 Fantastic to bring Google to the Business Cyber Centre in Chippenham back in March, improving over 70 local small and independent businesses digital skills & digital marketing with workshops and training!

📣 The day included ⬇️

➡️ Free digital mentoring to help local people and small businesses upskill and grow

➡️ Sessions on how to grow a business online and find new customers

➡️ Private mentoring sessions experts to focus on personal and business goals

📈 I was really pleased to see so many local businesses and residents from across the constituency at the event and hear from Google’s fantastic digital trainers

🗳️ Since being elected in 2015, I have visited and supported hundreds of small, local and independent businesses and I’m always keen to help them however I can – this event was a great way of supporting them to develop their skills

👩‍💻 A huge thank you to the Business Cyber Centre where this event was held, it really is such a fantastic venue – I opened the site back in May 2022, which was made possible with £3.7 million of Government investment 

🧑‍🏫 Plus a big thank you to everyone at Google and their trainers who helped to make the event possible!

Securing Investment for our Community

Elsewhere this year, we secured over £3.6 million of extra funding for Wiltshire Council to tackle potholes, we have been funding our local bus routes with the £2 bus fare cap and have extended this until the end of 2024, and on top of this, we pushed for an extra £2.1 million for Wiltshire bus services. 

For schools in our constituency, I successfully pushed for a £2.4 million cash boost, and we are investing more money than ever before in our NHS. We are also supporting our local farmers and food producers with £2.6 million from the government's Rural Prosperity Fund.

I also know that it has been a tough year for many and so we have been determined to support the most vulnerable people in our society. Families on Universal Credit, those on disability benefits and pensioners have received multiple government Cost of Living Payments, with those benefits increasing in line with inflation. 

I have also been a huge advocate for the Triple Lock, and this year as a result of the government's commitment to this more than 20,000 local pensioners received the largest ever cash increase to their pension of 10.1%.

Hosting Business Leaders in Bradford on Avon

📣 I organised a productive Business Leaders Roundtable at Leigh Park Hotel in Bradford on Avon back in September, bringing together business leaders from a whole host of industries. All of those attending have invested here in Wiltshire and created high quality jobs for local people. 🍃☀️

We discussed what makes Wiltshire an attractive place to invest and work in, some of the challenges that local businesses have faced and how we can best support them, as well as skills, training and future opportunities.👨‍🌾 🌸

Bringing together all of the key stakeholders like Wiltshire Council and Cllr Nick Botterill, the Swindon & Wiltshire LEP, Wessex Chamber and Wiltshire College with businesses and employers is absolutely key to encouraging working together and helping our local economy thrive. 📈🤝

From our small, local and independent businesses, all the way up to our largest employers, I am always keen to support them however I can as the local MP.

Thank you to all of those who took the time to attend. I will be running similar events in the future so please do let me know if you would like to attend or if you are a local business and would like me to visit or raise something with me. 👨‍💼👩‍💼

Raising £1750 for Wiltshire Air Ambulance!

💪🥵 It was an amazing day taking part in It’s A Knockout to raise money for Wiltshire Air Ambulance! A huge THANK YOU to everyone who donated and supported us. 🚁

🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️ It was such a fun day with loads of wacky challenges - we raised £1,750 from all of the very kind support!

Work Experience Opportunity for Local Young People!

👋 A pleasure to welcome 20 local students to spend an exciting week in my constituency office over the summer for my work experience program!

📣 The week is designed to give young people an insight into the work I do as your local MP, including knocking on doors and hearing your views, securing investment for the constituency, supporting constituents with casework, passing new laws in Parliament, holding surgeries and supporting local businesses and charities and much more. 

📝 The program included a talk from Melksham Independent News’ Operations Manager Joe McCann about local journalism, a Q&A session with Leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt MP and a very exciting visit to Parliament and Downing Street, which was kindly supported by Avon Protection. 

🗳️ I think it’s really important to help show the next generation all of the different work that MP’s do, and hopefully the week inspired a few budding MP’s of the future!

📬 If you know of a young person that might be interested for next year please do let me know and I will be in touch closer to the time.

I am Ending the Scourge of Speculative Development for Good!

Earlier this year, I organised a meeting for local Conservative Councillors to raise their concerns regarding planning and speculative development in our towns and villages with the Housing Minister, helping to shape new Government laws. 

One of the main issues that comes up time and time again when I am pounding the streets, 👊 on🚪 or holding my regular surgeries is speculative development.

Local residents often tell me they feel like they are being bombarded 😡 by housing that is not in line with the local plans or is not strategic. Residents give up hours and hours of their time to make plans for their area and for far too long, developers have ridden roughshod over local communities. Wiltshire has exceeded its housebuilding target and towns like Melksham have grown massively in recent years.    

Unplanned, unwanted development is a scourge on our society. This has to stop 🛑. This is why I have been speaking to Michael Gove to change this for good and put local communities in control 🔓 of their own future.  

The revised National Planning Policy Framework will do just that. Combined with the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act, we are putting local communities in the driving seat and we are placing beauty, delivery of improved infrastructure and local people at the front and centre of housebuilding.

The Rt Hon Michael Gove MP, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said:

“Michelle has been persistently made the point to me and the Housing Minister that we need to give more control to local communities to ensure housing is strategic and in line with local needs and amenities.

The changes that I have made to the National Planning Policy Framework alongside the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act, will protect areas like Melksham from unwarranted speculative development.

The changes I have announced are what Michelle has been asking for and will make life easier for councils who are doing the right thing by getting their plans in place and ensure that local communities are in control of where and what development happens in their area.”

Supporting Melksham Free Dining

Back in August I held a very special charity dinner and auction in Melksham to help raise money for local group Melksham Free Dining. The group were looking to raise funding to provide free meals to the community for an additional day each week, and having long supported the Diners and the fantastic work they do, I was more than happy to help! 

I was absolutely delighted that the event raised over £4,000 in total. Thank you to all of those who attended, and a huge thank you to all of those businesses and individuals who very generously donated auction prizes and supported the event. The group are always on the lookout for volunteers, so please do reach out to them if you could spare some time!

Cracking Down on Crime

Whilst most crimes in the county are down generally and the number of police officers is up, I know that we still have issues with things like anti-social behaviour and rural crime, and that people want to see their local bobbies out on the beat. 👮‍♀️👮‍♂️

We have heard this loud and clear and locally this is something which myself and the Police and Crime Commissioner Philip Wilkinson are very much agreed on. I know that the PCC wants officers out and about as much as possible, in both towns and villages.📍

Myself and the other Wiltshire MP’s have secured £4 million from the government’s Safer Streets Fund since 2020, and I have also recently run crime forums covering my whole patch to hear your views and experiences directly. 📣

Nationally, the government are cracking down on crime and toughening sentences👇

🔵 We are changing the law so life really does mean life for the most serious offenders, with no possibility of release

🔵 Tougher sentences for violent crimes, keeping the most dangerous criminals off our streets for as long as possible

🔵 Making the justice system work for victims and ending early releases

🔵 The Home Secretary has instructed all police forces to get back to basics and follow all possible leads when solving crimes

We are making good progress nationally, but we know there is more to do👇

✅ 1.8 million fewer crimes

✅ Violent crime down 46%

✅ Neighbourhood crime halved since 2010

Day in the Life with Melksham Independent News

In March, local journalist Joe McCann joined me to write an exciting day in the life feature for Melksham Independent News, getting a snapshot of what I get up to in a typical day as your local MP! From Department meetings, to the Spring Budget, to reading your letters and answering your questions in a special virtual meeting, it was a packed day! Thanks to Joe for his time. You can read the full article here.

Supporting our Farmers

This year I have also continued to support our farmers and rural workers for all of their hard work putting food on our tables and maintaining our beautiful Wiltshire countryside.🌳

I know that this has been challenging time for the industry, and this year for local farmers I have.👇

📣 Hosted a productive Farmer’s Roundtable in Melksham with the NFU and the Rural Payments Agency, to hear from local farmers directly and discuss the challenges they face. I have picked up all of their feedback with the Environment Secretary and Farming Minister

🚜 Helped secure £2.6 million from the Rural Prosperity Fund for Wiltshire to support land projects and encourage our rural economy to thrive

🇬🇧 Supported the Prime Minister’s drive to back British and cut red tape to help farmers diversify their land✂️

⚙️ Helped secure over £120,000 for farmers and foresters from the Farming and Tech Fund

💬 Following my roundtable I will be organising a further event for local farmers and land owners to speak to Defra directly and get any help they need

🌳 Supported the NFU's Back British Farming Day in Parliament

Resident Surgeries and Door Knocking!

Lovely to see so many residents at my surgeries and door knocking sessions throughout the year, including regularly at my office in Chippenham, at my virtual appointments, in Bowerhill, Melksham East, Semington, Bradford on Avon, Corsham, Devizes and at Melksham Food and River Festival to name just a handful! If there is anything I can do to help please do not hesitate to let me know.

2023 Report Card!

• This year I have continued to work with the fantastic team from Save The Hop Pole in Limpley Stoke, where we were able to secure £300,000 from the government's Community Ownership Fund, and I look forward to having a drink at the pub when it reopens soon!  

• I had a very interesting visit at Ark Data Centre’s Spring Park Campus in Corsham earlier this month. Ark are doing fantastic work for the area and the local economy with their work on data and the cloud!

• I always look forward to the epic scarecrow trails that local residents put up in our villages and towns over the summer. I had a great time doing the Holt Scarecrow Tail, so much effort went into the scarecrows and they were excellent this year!

• Throughout the year I have continued to bang the drum for Corsham Station as the lead sponsor of the bid to reopen the station, including writing to the Rail Minister for an update on progress.

• Had a fantastic opportunity to see Wadworth’s new multi-million pound brewery on Folly Road in Devizes - a real Wiltshire success story!

• I have continued progressing my Access To Cash in Melksham campaign - we have secured additional facilities at the Post Office, and are working to help secure a banking hub to preserve access to cash in the town.

• I revisited Christ Church in Bradford on Avon in September to catch up with Becky Strike and Stephen Pike to hear all about how their project to restore the Victorian church and turn it into a hub for the community.

• I had a very interesting visit to Ark Data Centre’s Spring Park Campus in Corsham at the start of the year. Ark are doing fantastic work for the area and the local economy with their work on data and the cloud, with £500 million of inward investment into the Corsham site helping to provide 150 high quality jobs for local people.

• Great to see the latest progress on The Hop Pole in Limpley Stoke back in August - the group restoring the pub secured a £300,000 investment from the government's Community Ownership Fund which I helped to secure.

• Saw the fantastic work that Caenhill Countryside Centre just outside Devizes are doing - amazing opportunity for young people to learn outdoors.

• In July I attended a very special presentation at the Wiltshire Air Ambulance HQ in Semington to celebrate Coombe Castle International in Melksham receiving the King's Award for Enterprise in International Trade.  

• Cut the ribbon and opened Siemens new modular hangar facility in September - a big investment into our local economy.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish you and your family a very merry and safe Christmas, and a very Happy New Year. God bless and I hope that you have a lovely time.

As you can see, it has defintely been another very busy year!

Thank you for taking the time to read my newsletter throughout the year – please do not hesitate to let me know if there is anything I can help with, or if you would like to speak to me at my next surgery in the New Year.

Best wishes,

Michelle Donelan

Member of Parliament for Chippenham Constituency