Lifeboat Services: Search and Rescue
Giles Watling Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) for securing this terribly important debate.
One of the first things I did when I moved to my constituency of Clacton many years ago was to join the local lifeboat service at Walton-on-the-Naze as a volunteer. I had this theory—probably a mistaken one—that, as a keen yachtsman and a user of water all my life, it would be nice to see friends when I got into trouble.
There is no doubt in this Chamber that the contribution of the RNLI is great, and the people at Clacton and Walton-on-the-Naze lifeboat stations are an amazing bunch of people, who deserve all the support we can give them. However, sadly, a young man named Sujal Sahu lost his life in Clacton this summer when visiting my constituency. The RNLI was brilliant in its efforts and it must not be let down. The service in Walton-on-the-Naze, in my patch, is reducing at the moment; the boat is being changed. The resources are being spread out across the constituency, but the service needs further support to help prevent loss of life.
That brings me to my main point, which is about prevention. As an avid yachtsman—I am chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on water safety—it is abundantly clear that we must educate people on the dangers of water. There are two piers in my constituency: Clacton pier and Walton pier. Near these obstructions on the beach are sand scoops—areas where the tidal current rushes past faster. People who come to the coast and do not know about coastal dangers can walk into such areas and find themselves, on a wonderful, hot summer’s day, suddenly in a very dangerous situation indeed; the sand beneath their feet has gone, the tide is running, and if they do not know how to swim or how to behave in water, they are at incredible risk.
In the summer, I held a water safety event—I invited schools to the beach so that pupils could learn how to behave safely around potentially dangerous water—but the issue prevails all year round; we heard about the recent sad case in Solihull. If we truly wish to support those who get into danger around water, we must support water safety education.
Oral Answers to Questions
Giles Watling Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
Oral Answers to Questions
Giles Watling Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Robert Courts)
As announced in October’s spending review, during this Parliament the Government are investing over £5 billion in highways maintenance—enough to fill in millions of potholes a year, repair dozens of bridges, and resurface roads up and down the country.
Robert Courts
My hon. Friend is quite right. Potholes are a menace to all road users, particularly motorcyclists. That is why the Government are working tirelessly to remove them from our roads. The Government’s decision to provide local highway authorities with a three-year highway maintenance funding settlement will enable them, in line with good asset management planning, to proactively plan their maintenance and pothole repair programme more effectively. I am sure that that will bring results in Wycombe.
Giles Watling
I thank the Minister for his answer. It takes an hour and a half by train to do the under 70 miles to Clacton, and we rely on our roads to prosper. We in Clacton often feel overlooked. I would like the Minister to come down to our sunshine coast, where he will see that we need better roads. Does he believe that transport links, particularly in coastal communities, should be the focus when it comes to levelling up?
Robert Courts
Coastal communities such as Clacton are part of this nation’s soul, and this Government are committed to such coastal communities and to levelling up across our Union. I can assure my hon. Friend that this Department works closely with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to ensure that coastal communities recover from covid-19 and to help them to level up. Of course, that includes transport links.
Oral Answers to Questions
Giles Watling Excerpts(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Grant Shapps
I share the hon. Gentleman’s frustration. I have a consultation virtually ready to go. I am working with Transport for the North to get that signed off across various different parties up there. I will be expressing the hon. Member’s concern to them to get on with that. I agree that Manchester to Leeds is part of it, but getting on with the bit to Liverpool, out to Hull and all the rest is also important.
Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Chris Heaton-Harris)
The new Greater Anglia train fleet will certainly deliver many benefits, including extra passenger capacity on the great eastern main line. I am particularly interested, too, in seeing the results of the great eastern main line taskforce study work on the upgrades my hon. Friend mentions, and the renewal of the strategic outline business case and wider economic benefit studies so we can move forward.
Oral Answers to Questions
Giles Watling Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Chris Heaton-Harris
I hear what my hon. Friend says. There is an argument for open access on our railways. The Williams review, which will report in the near future, will provide an opportunity to debate the issue at quite some length. I very much look forward to having that debate with my hon. Friend because he has some positive ideas.
Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
Draft Heavy Commercial Vehicles in Kent (No. 1) Order 2019
Giles Watling Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Chris Heaton-Harris
It is a bit of both. Some are new staff being recruited and some are being transferred from other functions across the United Kingdom.
I hope I have answered most of the questions; I will come back to my hon. Friend the Member for Dover on those I have not. We have a forum later today with Kent MPs and I will have the answers to any questions I have not answered.
My hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil asked me what we are doing to make lorries compliant. I hope I answered that in my comments on the comms campaign. We hope to be using the pop-up sites to tell drivers that they are border-ready. Currently, the message is about making sure that they understand what they need to do. Where the sites are popular and being used properly, and when we get to 1 November, we hope to move on to messages around, “Yes, actually that is a border-ready document; you should move down to Kent and you shouldn’t have too much of an issue to maintain flow.”
I want to give hon. Members a rough idea of the numbers of vehicles that could be in the Brock process in Kent. The slip road at Eurotunnel has capacity for 450 vehicles. The holding area at the Port of Dover has capacity for roughly 1,100 vehicles. The capacity of Brock M20 will be up to 2,000. Manston airfield will hold around 5,800. The Dover traffic access protocol has capacity of about 300, and if we needed it, the Brock M26 would hold 1,700 or so vehicles.
Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
The plans for many thousands of lorries to be parked as part of Operation Brock are well and good, and I understand that the plans are for the worst-case scenario, as is much of Operation Yellowhammer. I recently made a trip to the continent and I have seen the lanes cut off for Operation Brock up and down the M20. If something goes wrong or something does happen, as happened to me on my way to France, all the traffic that would have been on the M20 will go through the lovely lanes of Kent. What is in place to prevent that happening across rural Kent?
Chris Heaton-Harris
Brock will be in place to stop that happening. The powers we are discussing today will be the powers that the police and the representatives of the highways authorities will be using to stop lorries from doing exactly that. That is why we are here today to examine this statutory instrument and the other two with which it is associated. There are powers that can be used in bits, but, realistically, this is the law that the Kent Resilience Forum and others have been calling for, to stop exactly what my hon. Friend has described in his intervention happening.
Delay Repay: Great Eastern Main Line
Giles Watling Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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James Cleverly
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Work-life balance is very important. We recognise that commercial activity underpins the funding of public services—that is key—but life balance is also really important. My hon. Friend is the father of two lovely little girls, and I know that he is very proud of them. All of us want to be able to make a commitment to our families, but that is detrimentally affected when services are cancelled and delayed.
Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
We suffer in Clacton, too, as we are at the end of the line, as my hon. Friend knows. I have a very large number of letters in my mailbox about cancellations and delays. That also happens at weekends—some of my constituents work at weekends—and we have many replacement bus services. That must be dealt with, too. We must have a good weekend service for people who travel not only for work but for leisure activities.
James Cleverly
My hon. Friend is absolutely right.
My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester rightly focused on Delay Repay, and I echo his calls. I will not repeat the requests he made of the Minister—from where I am standing, I can see the copious notes that the Minister has written, so I know he has made a note of that point. There are other things that I would like him to consider. I wrote to him recently about this issue, and he assured me that I will have a reply in good time. I will not chase him on that, because I know that mine is not the only correspondence he has received about this issue.
On encouraging people to use more environmentally friendly modes of transport, I find it difficult to have a meaningful conversation with my constituents about leaving their cars behind. It is very difficult for me to persuade even people who live in Braintree, who have the best opportunity to step away from the internal combustion engine, because their immediate response is, “Well, James, I have to rely on my car because I cannot rely on the trains.” The lack of reliability therefore has an impact not just on train services, but on more environmentally friendly modes of transport.
One of the issues that I brought up with Greater Anglia and that is linked to Delay Repay is the importance of speedy and accurate communications when things go wrong. Everybody is frustrated if a train is delayed or cancelled, but there is perhaps nothing more frustrating than waiting at the station not knowing whether the train is delayed and not having enough facts to make choices about credible alternative methods of transport.
When trains are delayed, my constituents must decide whether to walk back to their house to get their car to drive to another station and to park there, or whether to make alternative arrangements and change their childcare. If they decide to get in their car and move, there is little more frustrating than seeing the train that they could have been on pull out. Communication is therefore key.
James Cleverly
My hon. Friend is absolutely right.
The final point that I want to make is that my commuters—I am sure this is true of all commuters across the region—are not unreasonable people. They are pragmatic. They understand that the rolling stock is old and is in the process of being replaced. They recognise that the route into London is going through a refurbishment and upgrade programme, which causes disruptions. Even though they pay the same amount of money for their season ticket as people on the main line, they recognise that they are on a branch line, which has certain disadvantages. They are sensible, pragmatic, reasonable people. That said, their patience is not an ever-filling well. When I hosted a public meeting last spring, the passion—I will put it no stronger than that—of my commuters and their desire to see the service and the communication improved and to see Delay Repay introduced in a timely manner cannot be overstated.
I have no doubt that the Minister has heard the concerns of colleagues representing this area, and he knows what we want first and foremost, but I hope that, if he can get a resolution on Delay Repay, he will then turn his mind to other enduring challenges, such as improving communication and wi-fi.
Giles Watling
On communication, it is all very well having Delay Repay—it is good to have it being communicated to passengers—but when Delay Repay 15 is introduced, it must be splashed widely so that everybody knows how to use it and that it is there. Surely that is the point.
James Cleverly
Yes, indeed; it would be good news, and I would strongly urge both the Department and the train operating company to be very vocal if we get it introduced in a timely manner, because it would be welcomed.
Andrew Jones
That is an important point well made. Up and down the country, we see TOCs partner with either public bodies or, as in this case, successful and important charities. The British Transport Police and the secure station scheme work with the Railway Children and the Samaritans, for example, and such partnerships can make and are making a difference.
I mentioned that performance has been mixed over the autumn period, but it is starting to improve. Looking at the public performance measures, Greater Anglia’s PPM for the period ending 5 January was 89.7%, which should be compared with the target in the franchise agreement of 88.7%. However, we want to go even further. We want all passengers on our network to receive the best possible service.
Giles Watling
We are at the end of the line down in Clacton and Walton-on-the-Naze, and it feels like the further away a place is, the more it gets ignored. Will the Minister please give some reassurance to my commuters that their train times will improve?
Andrew Jones
I can absolutely confirm to my hon. Friend that trains cannot go beyond the end of the line, because it then gets very wet. However, there is no way that different parts of the network are being treated disproportionately. There is an even approach, and everybody is entitled to a good service. That is what we are working towards. The Department’s work with the train operating company looks at performance as a whole, not individual parts, so I assure my hon. Friend that his concerns are being addressed.
I was talking about how we want to go further. The target is to have over 92% of trains arriving on time by the end of the franchise. Together with Network Rail, the train operating company needs to manage day-to-day performance and ensure that passengers see performance improve. It is my priority to see our trains provide an excellent service that delivers a network upon which commuters and passengers can rely every day.
Many colleagues have mentioned new trains. Greater Anglia has a great initiative, but it is part of a bigger scheme right across the country. Some 7,000 new carriages will be entering service on our network over the next two years, and the change is comparable to the UK’s move from diesel to steam. It is that kind of scale of development. The new trains will deliver significant improvements for passengers. In Greater Anglia’s case, the entire fleet of trains will be replaced, with over 1,000 new carriages on order. They are being built by Stadler and Bombardier, with manufacturing and construction well underway. The first five of the new Stadler trains have been delivered to Norwich Crown Point depot, where they are undergoing testing and acceptance processes.
We expect that the new trains will start to be rolled out across the network from the middle of this year, with the full roll-out completed by the end of 2020. These state-of-the-art trains will provide many more seats for busy services, which relates to points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) and the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham). The new trains will be more efficient, accelerate faster and have much better customer information. They will also provide a much-improved on-board environment with wi-fi, air conditioning and power sockets, which goes back to the contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree .
I want to inform the House that Greater Anglia has a franchise commitment to deliver two direct trains each weekday between Liverpool Street and Norwich in 90 minutes and two direct trains each weekday between Liverpool Street and Ipswich in 60 minutes. Those new services follow long-standing campaigns from both sides of the House, and they will commence in May. Since the start of the franchise, Greater Anglia has invested over £100 million at stations and depots and in ticketing initiatives. Major station upgrades have been completed at Norwich, Ipswich, Cambridge and Chelmsford, but I will have to take away the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford about the second railway station there. I will need to do a bit of research to provide the exact up-to-date position, but I will write to her with that information. I recognise the point about two for one and the passing loop, which has improved resilience across the entire network.
Transport for the South East
Giles Watling Excerpts(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
It is an honour to speak under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) on securing this important debate.
Transport plays a crucial role in the development of a strong economy. That is what l argued on 22 March when I delivered a speech in the other Chamber of this House during an equally important debate on the economy, which I am pleased to say continues to defy the naysayers, and I was one of them. In that speech I urged the Government to make some use of the expected Brexit dividend by spending some of it on the roads and rails going to Clacton—I have moved our argument slightly north of Bexhill.
It is interesting to note that connectivity along the coast is not something we could do in my area because we have these damned great rivers, so I am going along the lines of being one of the spokes on the bicycle wheel when we talk about Clacton. As a regular commuter myself, I know that it takes far too long for my constituents to travel from Clacton to the capital, and vice versa. We are that spoke.
Without more investment in transport infrastructure around Clacton, we will limit the incentive for people to move to and commute from our glorious sunshine coast. That would harm the economic potential of my district and would restrain the prosperity of hard-working local residents: an outcome that is not acceptable to me or my residents. That is why I have continued to push for what I call my 70 in 60 campaign at every opportunity, which has the ultimate aim of ensuring that the people of Clacton are able to cover the 70 miles—that is all it is—to London in 60 minutes. That is not unthinkable. It is not even illegal.
Currently the journey of 70 miles takes one hour and 40 minutes nearly, and it takes longer than it did in the days of steam, which, unfortunately, I remember—or fortunately; depends how you look at it. If we get that journey time down to about an hour it would in my opinion regenerate our area, and it would make our sunshine coast a place for people to come, live, work and play. I am here today to plug that campaign once again, because my constituency has so much to offer, not only as a tourist destination, but as a place to live, and it has real untapped economic potential. When it comes to unlocking that potential, I know, as someone with extensive experience of supporting businesses in my district—I was the cabinet member for regeneration at Tendring District Council—that important investment in infrastructure is a crucial first step, so I am pleased to say that we will soon have new rolling stock with wireless internet and USB ports. The trains will be comfortable and modern and they are beginning to be delivered this year.
The new trains will stop and start with greater efficiency. They will be quicker, but not quick enough, which is why, although I celebrate the positive development of the new trains, I maintain that much more must be done because, without more significant investment in our transport infrastructure, commuters simply will not believe that Clacton is a place they can live and work from, as the journey times to London are currently so unfavourable. I have been meeting regularly with Network Rail, Greater Anglia, and the Great Eastern Main Line Taskforce to raise my concerns and support their efforts to improve the current appalling situation.
Additionally, as the Minister will probably know to his cost, I continue to make representations to his Department for Transport at every opportunity. I thank him for his support and I am encouraged by the Government’s shrewd approach to transport investment.
I do, of course, recognise that the core issue is that places such as Colchester are growing and have an increasingly young and more economically active population. Consequently, they are seen as more vital for transport investment than some of the older communities and coastal communities such as Clacton that have for far too long been neglected. However, although the demographics are set against us, I am determined to keep going and find a way forward. We cannot fall into a cycle of neglect where our older communities are left isolated—I speak as one of them because I became a pensioner a few weeks ago—[Hon. Members: “No!”] Thank you for that. Our older communities are left isolated in favour of areas that have younger residents and new development. We want to attract younger residents, and if we do not take steps now to invest more in improving Clacton’s transport infrastructure, we cannot hope to attract that younger economically active population at any point in the future.
I accept that we have not built enough homes in Clacton. That might be another reason why young commuters do not wish to call my constituency their home, so I would support sustainable housing developments in my local area, because we must do our part to help address the national housing crisis. That is not only vital for people in Clacton, but for the entire south-east region. However, the Government must do their part, too, and we must improve our transport infrastructure before any new major housing developments break ground. We simply cannot build more dwellings without first making it easy for people to occupy and live in them, and investing more in transport would do that.
Furthermore, such investment will address the concerns of current residents, who just this weekend told me they have worries about the new developments because of congestion on their roads and railways. That is why the Government should focus on infrastructure investment before delivering new homes. We need the I before E approach: infrastructure before major expansion. By following that approach in the south-east, we can deliver quick transport to London and to major regional hubs such as Colchester, Ipswich and Chelmsford and further to the north in Norwich. By doing so, we can deliver the homes we desperately need, the transport we require and the economic opportunities that are currently just out of reach. With that in mind, there are various opportunities across the south-east that I would like the Minister to look at.
One of the projects includes Stansted airport, which I heard today has the most efficient runway in the south-east. It is already a vital transport hub, but that hub needs to be able to continue to expand, and in the next few years the right decisions need to be made to help the airport reach its economic potential. According to projections, that will deliver an additional 15,000 jobs by 2030, with a £1 billion boost to our region’s growth. I ask the Minister to do all he can to support that project as I know there are those who live in my constituency who work there, but it is still quite a long a commute.
It will come as no surprise to the Minister to hear me ask him to support the upgrade of the A120. He knows how passionate I am about that campaign, and I was pleased to read in his recent letter to me that the A120 scheme is in a strong position moving toward the decision making process for the second road investment strategy. Delivering an improved A120 would open the doors to a renaissance in house building in the south-east and connectivity to Stansted. For any hon. Members who agree with me, I will be hosting a reception on 17 July to move the campaign over the line, so please come along.
There are jobs to be created and homes to be built in areas just like Clacton if we invest in and improve the roads and rails to such areas in the south-east, which we have neglected in the past. For people in Clacton there is the world of entertainment, enterprise and revelry to be had in London if we improve the ability to access it for people in some of our less well-connected areas. I will always argue that the transport investment strategy should focus on delivering locally to unlock the economic potential of communities such as Clacton: regionally, on projects to improve connectivity between our economic hubs; and of course nationally to rebalance our economy. The implications of such a decision for our economy, transport in the south-east and our country are in my view only positive, and I back the body for transport in the south-east.
Air Travel Organisers’ Licensing Bill
Giles Watling ExcerptsMonday 3rd July 2017
(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
It is a great honour to follow the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), who made an impassioned speech. It is also a great honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), who spoke without notes. I intend to do no such thing.
ATOL equals peace of mind. It is safe to go on holiday if the holiday is protected by ATOL. That makes sense. Peace of mind is good; it is happy. I therefore support the Bill.
It is also an honour to be here at all. Just a few short weeks before I stood for election—at the by-election in Clacton in 2014—I was on tour with Jason Donovan in a production of “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”. I have played on many stages across the world in 45 years, but this has to be the finest. Thank you, residents of Clacton; I will do my very best for you.
I was honoured and indeed humbled when the residents of Clacton gave me the overwhelming support they did at the last election, but I had one other overwhelming sensation, which I am sure many others have, when they first take their seat in the House—that was, what on earth have I let myself in for? When I relayed my concerns to my wife, Vanda—she gets a namecheck as well—she said, “It’s a stage and an audience. What could possibly go wrong?” What a stage and what an audience!
In preparation, I looked up the advice on maiden speeches. It tells us that the typical maiden speech is divided into three parts. Part one consists of being nice about the previous incumbent of the seat. I remind Members that my seat is Clacton. Part two involves a glittering description of the constituency, outlining its fabulous assets and its wonderful potential. In part three, one is advised to lay out some of the plans one has to enhance the wonderful area one represents, left even more wonderful by the splendid previous incumbent.
So to part one. My immediate predecessor was the notable Douglas Carswell, against whom I fought two parliamentary elections. It must be said that we did not always see eye to eye, but I will say this: Douglas was an extremely good constituency MP. As a district councillor, I was regularly in contact with him and I saw at first hand his competent dealings in the constituency. You would send him a note and he always gave you a considered reply—a good example to me. Even after he moved gently on from our party, he always behaved like a gentleman and it is to his credit that we fought those two elections without any mud-slinging, however tempting it might have been. We fought on the issues, not on the personalities. I had respect for him holding his views, even if I did not agree, and I frequently did not.
When I made my speech on being elected, I touched on the subject of respect. I paid tribute to my fellow candidates. I respect them for going on the sometimes gruelling journey that we all know about in this place, pacing the streets, taking some flak, but meeting some wonderful people. I may have stoutly disagreed with my fellow candidates on many issues, but I never once attacked them personally. You can check Facebook, Twitter or any of the other social media platforms and you will see that I never denigrated the other candidates. It seems a pity that we have reached a nadir through social media where a lot of plain nastiness is regular. If we all had a little more respect, the world would be a far happier place.
To part two. Over the last 10 years, I have been fortunate to represent my residents at Tendring District Council. My ward, Frinton-on-Sea, has always been at the forefront of my mind when dealing with issues at district level and, from now on, Clacton, my constituency, its residents and their views will always be at the centre of all I do here.
The Clacton constituency is roughly half of Tendring district, a stunning peninsula with the Colne to the south-west, the Stour to the north and the North sea to the east; I think Members can see where I am going with his. As a result, we have 36 miles of the most stunning coastline pretty much anywhere in the country. We have the sandy beaches of Walton, Frinton and Clacton. Probably the best beaches of all are at Jaywick Sands. We have the Walton Backwaters, a mysterious area of tidal creeks, mudflats and islands— salt marshes and marsh grasslands which in the late ’30s gave Arthur Ransome the inspiration to write his book, “Secret Water”. It is called “Secret Water” because, when one approaches from the sea, it is difficult to see that there is an entrance there. So we have the buzz of Clacton, the quiet of Frinton, the rustic charm of Walton, the beautiful village and priory of St Osyth, and the bucolic hinterland of gorgeous villages and countryside. It is no wonder that we have a fast-reviving tourism industry. We are the sunshine coast.
Which brings me neatly to part three. I find it absolutely incomprehensible that this extraordinarily special place so dear to my heart, lying as it does a mere 70 miles from London, has historically been constantly overlooked. That 70-mile journey takes the best part of one hour 40 minutes by train, which is simply not good enough. A journey by car during peak times is an adventure only for the very brave. The A12 is known to be one of the worst roads in the country. It is often argued that we should be thankful that we are so hard to get to, but there is the old adage: down good roads wealth flows. Imagine if we could bring that journey closer to an hour. Seventy miles in an hour—not unthinkable; not even illegal. We would suddenly get the wealth of London on our doorstep and we would regenerate.
Clacton faces many challenges, most of which we have been taking head-on at the district council, and we have had some success. The long-awaited regeneration of Jaywick has begun. It has new roads, new buildings and a great sense of community. It is on the up. Walton-on-the-Naze has new developments and quality shops arriving. It is on the up. In the last five years, at the district council, we have managed to obtain £50 million-worth of investment for the area, £36 million of which has been spent on new sea defences in Holland-on-Sea and Clacton. You have to go to see them. We have created new lagoons, reefs and beaches over a 5 km stretch. We are on the up. But we need that infrastructure, and that is just one of my priorities for our much overlooked constituency.
I just want to remind everyone that we do exist in Clacton and that all are welcome to come and see us. I will take pleasure in taking visitors to the Naze Tower, built in 1720 by Trinity House as a landmark for mariners. It stands on the highest point in the constituency and gives breath-taking views across to Suffolk and over the beaches and looks down on those treasured backwaters.
We are a jewel of a place with many facets. It is well worth that 1 hour 40 minute journey; do come.