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** Monthly News from Neil O’Brien MP
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May 2025

Hello,

Welcome to the May edition of my e-newsletter.

County Council elections

Last Thursday there were County Council elections across Harborough, Oadby and Wigston. It was a very tough set of elections for the Conservatives, but I would like to offer my congratulations to Cllr Phil King and Cllr David Page on winning their seats. I would also like to offer my thanks to all the candidates who weren’t successful, as well as everyone who helped our campaign.

City expansion petition reaches 7,000 signatures

The petition which I set up, alongside neighbouring MPs, Alicia Kearns and Peter Bedford, has reached over 7,000 signatures. The City Mayor in Leicester has plans to take over areas such as Oadby & Wigston and Great Glen, as well as other parts of the county.

It is as important as ever to keep up the pressure to stop this happening, so if you know anyone who hasn’t signed, please get them to do so. The County Council under the Conservatives were planning to submit plans to the Government which would see Leicester’s boundaries staying as they are. Since the elections last week, the Council is now being run by Reform councillors. At the moment we have no idea what they have planned, so we need to keep growing the petition to ensure that they know that we do not want the city expanding into our area.
Sign the petition here ([link removed])

Meeting headteachers from rural schools

Recently I hosted a meeting in Parliament with the Conservative Rural Forum where I met with headteachers from rural schools.

They shared with me the specific challenges facing small rural schools, including recruitment and retention difficulties. It’s vital that government policy supports these schools and it’s something I have been working on, both locally and as a Shadow Education Minister. We have a number of schools in rural areas locally and I know they all face specific challenges due to their rural location.

It was a useful meeting and it will help to feed into Conservative Party policy over the coming months.

Challenging two tier hiring decisions
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I recently made a film with Shadow Justice Secretary, Robert Jenrick about two-tier hiring decisions. Sadly there are too many examples where government departments, councils or the police make decisions based on skin colour rather than the ability to do the job.
Watch the video here ([link removed])

Update on Harborough’s Local Plan

Recently the County Council published a scathing report on Harborough’s Local Plan and it said that transport concerns had not been properly addressed, particularly along the A6. The County Council has described the draft Local Plan as ‘unsound’, which is pretty damming language. I have frequently warned Harborough Council not to rush the Local Plan process and it turns out that there are problems. I am calling on them to pause the process to address the many issues that the County Council have raised.

You can read the above article online here ([link removed]) .

Concerns raised about sports hall at Harborough Leisure Centre

I have recently been contacted by some users at Harborough Leisure Centre regarding the future use of the sports hall following a decision to move some of the activities to an area formally known as the dome. The new area is clearly not suitable, so I have written to ‘Everyone Active’, who run the Leisure Centre, to ask them about this. I will report back once I have a response.

Keep in touch

As ever, you can follow the work I am doing on my Facebook page ([link removed]) . 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

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