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Monthly News from Neil O’Brien MP

May 2024

Hello,

Welcome to the May edition of my e-Newsletter.

Meeting with Network Rail

I met with Network Rail last week to discuss a few things regarding the local railways.

Spion Cop bridge in South Wigston.  Network Rail are gearing up for the next phase of work on electrification, which will take the wires on from Wigston, up through Leicester to Derby and Nottingham and ultimately to Sheffield.  It is a great project which will improve the service.  However, I am pressing Network Rail and DFT to do the work in a way that allows Spion Cop bridge (by the big Tesco) to remain open. They are considering options at the moment – from track lowering to reconstructing the bridge.  I am pressing for them to do whatever it takes to minimise disruption and keep the bridge open. Whatever happens, the work is likely to take place summer next year. They are going to be doing some investigative work over the summer, as the bridge (built 1901) needs repairs anyway.  Again, I am pressing them to try and minimise any disruption from this.

Newton Lane bridge and Wistow businesses.  I am pressing Network Rail to speed up compensation for affected businesses and speed up work on the bridge.  They say people are working overtime on it, and in fairness I do see people working there now as I go past.

Market Harborough Station.  I also pressed Network Rail to tidy up the unsightly area around the big grey boxes, and to work with Market Harborough in Bloom to sort it out.  The electrification works depot on the car park has now gone so it is time they clear up this ugly site.

New trains.  The new electric wires from Kettering to Wigston will get switched on for the first time this summer, and the new trains will start to arrive for drivers to train on (no pun intended) at the end of the year.

Oadby & Wigston Local Plan

Oadby and Wigston Borough are in the process of coming up with their next local plan.  In it, the council lay out all the sites that have come forward for development. They are aiming to submit the final plan next spring.  They propose to build 5,040 homes in the Borough, over the 21 years of the plan.  Just over a fifth of these (1,092 homes) are not for local need, but the result of the Council voting to accept overspill housing from the City of Leicester.

There is no legal requirement to take on this extra housing, and I think it is a mistake, as there is potential for the city to do more through brownfield regeneration and building upwards.

The council’s consultation document states that the sites identified have potential capacity for up to 6,000 new homes.  But this potential may actually come down as they are further assessed for sustainability and practicality.  

That means it is likely that a large proportion of the potential sites are going to be in the council’s final adopted plan.

The map above shows the areas to be built on in yellow.  Some key points are:

• All the main car parks in Oadby and Wigston are potentially to be built on.

• The gap between Oadby and Wigston would be filled in with housing.

• There would be development all around the edge of Oadby.

Full details can be found here.

I would encourage any resident to submit their comments via email to: [email protected]. It is vital that as many people as possible have their say.

There has also been a petition set up calling on the council not to accept this extra housing, which you can sign here.

Progress on potholes

Sorting out potholes is a massive priority for me.  Motorists often complain to me about damage to cars, and for cyclists potholes are potentially very dangerous.

There are far too many, but some progress is being made.  Last year Leicestershire County Council resurfaced over 600,000 square metres of roads – equivalent to over 65 miles of road.  This year the council will resurface over 700,000 square metres, or over 75 miles of roads.

The council’s baseline budget for highway maintenance is £17.7 million a year.  On top of that, from the Government’s Budget they received an extra £3.1 million last year, and from Network North Funding the County got an extra £2.3 million last year and a further £2.3 million this year.  

Over the next seven years the council will also be receiving a much larger amount - an extra £238 million from reallocated HS2 funding, to go towards both repairs and improvements.

It is good that extra funding from government is enabling the County Council to do more and step up the amount of repair work they are doing.  The extra money has enabled resurfacing work in Gumley, Saddington, Little Bowden, Kibworth, Wistow and Market Harborough.

As well as solving some bigger problems - like the junctions in Kibworth - I’m keen that some of that money is used to improve the condition of the roads.

Rolling out full fibre broadband to Harborough, Oadby and Wigston

New figures show that 56% of people in the Harborough, Oadby and Wigston constituency can now get full fibre broadband, up from just 20% a year ago.

Our area is leading the County - in Leicestershire as a whole 40% now have access.

And over 80% of people can access some form of ultrafast broadband – either full fibre or another very fast connection – defined as a connection that delivers download speeds of over 100 MB per second.

The rollout of full fibre is the biggest infrastructure project in the country and is supported by £5 billion of government investment as part of “Project Gigabit”.

In February the government signed a new contract worth £71.5 million to enable more places to get access in Leicestershire and Warwickshire.

I recently met the engineers delivering fibre locally.  I'd never been in a telephone exchange before (or seen so many wires in one place!). It’s the biggest infrastructure programme in the country and an incredibly complex project.

They are making incredible progress, and in the last two years we have gone from a fifth of people having access to full fibre broadband a year ago to more than half now.  The pace of rollout is very rapid and I was pleased to see the government spending £70 million locally to make sure it reaches more people. But do let me know if you are having problems on the usual email address.

You can check the availability of full fibre or other high speed internet in your neighbourhood here.

Sign my petition for a Sunday bus service for Great Glen

I am calling for local bus operators to offer a Sunday service to Great Glen.  Currently, of the two services that connect Market Harborough to Leicester, only the X3 stops in the village. Consequently, the village has no service on Sundays, as the X3 only runs six days a week.

As many will be aware, I have been campaigning to improve local bus services for several years now and we have made great progress so far.  We now have better coordination between the two services that run along the A6 corridor and joint ticketing is now in operation.  But despite all these improvements, there is still an anomaly in that Great Glen has no Sunday service.

The village is situated between Kibworth and Oadby, both of which are served by regular buses on Sundays.  Great Glen is a large village, so it’s surprising that it has no service on this day.  When I met with Arriva, the company told me that there may be wider changes introduced in the autumn, which could throw up opportunities to make this happen.  But nothing has been agreed yet, so I am keen to grab this opportunity to review Sunday services whilst other changes are being considered.

I have set up a petition calling for a Great Glen Sunday service – the more people who sign, the stronger the case will be for it to be introduced.  

You can sign the Great Glen bus petition here.

Visit to Manor High School

I had a useful meeting the other day with Simon Grieff, the Headteacher at Manor High.

We talked about lots of different issues.  Manor High is now in the top 50 schools in the entire country in terms of academic progress, which is fantastic. This measure, called “Progress 8” measures how much better children do at GCSE compared to when they start senior school.

We also talked about the traffic to Manor and Brookside schools, which is a longstanding issue.  The school are continuing to encourage children to walk.  They also now have two bus bays to get buses off the road.

In the lower years the proportion of pupils who are from within Oadby and Wigston has increased from about half to about two thirds: as the school has done better and better more local children are attending. That means more will be able to walk and not come in a car.

But I am also interested in people’s suggestions for ways we can address the traffic without making things harder for local residents.

We also talked about the exciting plans for a new sports hall which will go at the back of the school – in the background of the above picture.  Onwards and upwards! 

New phone system for Market Harborough Medical Centre

I was in Market Harborough Medical Centre recently for a meeting - I happened to visit on the day they had moved over to a new modern phone system - which was nice to see as it was something I announced funding for as a minister.

Unlike the old analogue phone systems you will always get through and won't get an engaged tone. It also has a call back function - so you won't need to keep hanging on the phone and can instead get called back when you are at the front of the queue.

I was actually in for a meeting about their new building - 6 extra consulting rooms for the GP practice plus three for the pharmacy and better accommodation for the people who answer the phones.  We were talking about how to sort out the parking during the construction which I am contacting the council about as I think they could offer some of their car parks nearby.

Keep in touch

As ever, you can follow the work I am doing on my Facebook page.  Please do consider forwarding this to anyone living locally, and if I can be of any help, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me.

With best wishes,

Neil O’Brien

Member of Parliament for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston