Justine Greening MP Writes To Residents
)pening the new Jobcentre Plus, her new Creditworthiness Assessment Bill and more
Dear Resident,
Parliament returned this month and as always there have been loads of events going on in and around Putney, Southfields and Roehampton. I've introduced a Creditworthiness Assessment Bill into Parliament to help people renting across the country to get access to more affordable credit. Meanwhile the Social Mobility Pledge I set up to get businesses providing more opportunities to young people is getting more and more organisations supporting it. As ever, if you'd like to get involved in a project or campaign I'm working on or have any local concerns, let me know.
Working in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields
In September, I had a busy month getting out and about, working on local issues raised by residents with me, including:
• Wrote around 700 letters or emails to constituents about their concerns.
• Had over 95 meetings in my role as MP.
• Joined Deputy Mayor and West Putney Councillor Jane Cooper at the annual Get Active Festival in Roehampton which had a fantastic Kings and Queens banquet for older members of the Roehampton community, ran by fantastic volunteers and Regenerate RISE.
• Attended the Institution and Induction of the Reverend John Whittaker as the Team Rector at St Mary's Church.
• Met with Dr Nicola Jones and James Blythe of the Wandsworth Clinical Commissioning Group to discuss local NHS funding.
• Chaired a meeting of the Roehampton Playing Fields Stakeholders' Trust to review the business plan and local support for future management of the playing fields - see a longer update below.
• Visited Battersea Dogs and Cats home to see their fantastic facilities and discuss local animal welfare.
• Opened the new Wandsworth Jobcentre Plus, alongside discussing how they can support Roehampton and local residents to take advantage of the jobs created by Roehampton regeneration.
• Joined lots of children from Sacred Heart Primary School and the Alton Primary School at the Rackets Cubed day at the Roehampton Club. Rackets Cubed encourages kids to practice maths, and do sports all while having a great time.
• Joined the Tideway's Putney Foreshore Festival and had the chance to support other great local work by Thames21, Hubbub and In the Drink UK, underway alongside the Putney Plastics Pledge helping to reduce plastic further and take care of Putney Embankment and the River Thames.
• Visited Putney High School to speak to them about their Breathe Campaign Week which aimed to see what local students and the school could do to reduce air pollution.
• Held a community meeting coffee morning in Putney Pantry in St Mary's Church to hear from local residents about their views of Putney High Street.
• Met with Chief Superintendent Sally Benatar, the senior policewoman in charge of Wandsworth and the overall South West London Basic Command Unit, to raise residents' concern about crime locally.
• Joined local Southfields Councillors at the Southfields Harvest Festival at St Barnabas.
• Went along to the RISE Regenerate lunch again provided by local volunteers and hosted by the owners of the fantastic Templeton House in Roehampton.
Working in Westminster
As your local Member of Parliament, this month in Westminster I have:
• Introduced the Creditworthiness Assessment Bill to help renters across the country get access to more affordable credit - you can read more about it below!
• Met with businesses such as BT, Adidas and Cisco about the Social Mobility Pledge.
• Welcomed Wandsworth Borough Council as the first local authority to commit to the Social Mobility Pledge as an employer.
• Spoke to UK Active about how we can encourage children and young people to be more active and healthier.
• Got an update on the work of the One Campaign on international development.
• Attended the Girl Guide's 10th Annual Attitudes Survey launch on girls' experiences and spoke to guides about what more we can do to encourage young women.
• Hosted a roundtable with charities, volunteers and interested groups on how to get more involved with the Social Mobility Pledge.
The Creditworthiness Assessment Bill
This month I introduced a bill into the House of Commons. The Creditworthiness Assessment Bill is a simple but powerful change which would create a level playing field for 15 million renters to get fair access to credit.
At the moment, if you own your home and pay a mortgage, a lender will take into account your mortgage payments to assess your credit score to see how reliable you are to lend to. The higher your score, the better deal you get on loans, whether mortgage payments, car loans or even mobile phone plans. But if you were renting the very same home, these payments aren’t taken into account when determining your credit history.
The Creditworthiness Assessment Bill would change the law so that credit providers such as banks have to consider rental and council tax payments as part of your credit history. It will help the millions of reliable renters across the country. This is especially important for renters in our community, whose years of responsible payments should be taken into account in future mortgage or loan deals.
I'm campaigning with crossbench Peer, Lord Bird from the House of Lords and we already have cross party support. The Creditworthiness Assessment Bill has already been supported by the House of Lords and I now aim to get it passed by the House of Commons and into law.
Roehampton Playing Fields Update
Over the last year I've been working with the Roehampton Playing Fields Community Trust, residents, and community groups to help the Trust come up with a plan to develop a sustainable and viable alternative proposal to run the playing fields.
A business plan has now been created that will hopefully give a real boost to our local facilities but also with the backing of local residents - addressing the concerns of residents about light and noise, and providing for the needs of local teams and youth groups, and of course ensuring that the fields are managed effectively so as to be cost efficient.
I've written to Wandsworth Borough Council to express my support for these plans and will keep you updated with the next steps.
Wandsworth Basic Command Unit Police Meeting
This month I met with Chief Superintendent Sally Benatar, head of the South West London Borough Command Unit which includes Wandsworth, and with Superintendent Peter Gardner and Safer Neighbourhoods lead Inspector Barrie Capper. We were able to discuss moped crime progress - reported moped crime is now down by 29%. The discussion also covered what is being done by the police to combat youth on youth, drug and gang crimes locally. If you have particular concerns regarding crime locally, do let me know and I will also raise this at my next meeting.
CCG Meeting
This month I met with Dr Nicola Jones and James Blythe of Wandsworth Clinical Commissioning Group to discuss local NHS and GP service provision, and some of the local issues that residents have raised with me, including mental health provision and the link with schools. We also discussed where the additional £20 billion NHS budget uplift from April 2019 can be invested to make a difference for local healthcare. If you have particular areas where you feel extra NHS investment can make the difference - whether in our community GP or local provision or in local hospitals we rely on, it would be very helpful to get your views.
Anthony Nolan's Communities vs Blood Cancer
Every 14 minutes someone is diagnosed with blood cancer and last year over 2000 people needed a stem cell or bone marrow transplant, so this month in Parliament I joined the Anthony Nolan organisation who are campaigning for more people to register as stem cell and transplant donors. In Putney, we have around 1385 people currently on the stem cell donor register and just over 100 people registered in the last year. I'm on the stem cell register and it is really easy to do - just takes a few minutes and you could be there when someone needs you to help save their life. It would be absolutely brilliant if we could get more people to register, particularly young people as donors under 30 lead to better survival rates for recipients. Join me by registering here.
I hope that this update gives you a brief snapshot of some of the things I am working on as our local Member of Parliament. As ever, if you would like to contact me or raise an issue, than please get in touch and I will do the best I can to help. You can email me on justine@justinegreening.co.uk, write to me at 3 Summerstown, SW17 0BQ or call my office on 0208 946 4557. You can also follow me on Twitter and Facebook to see all my latest updates.
Best wishes,
October 5, 2018