Christmas Adjournment

Mark Francois Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

Before the House adjourns for Christmas, I wish to raise several important constituency issues. First, we have a challenging situation at King Edmund School, just off the Ashingdon Road. The school is in the process of having a major block demolished, as part of a multimillion-pound Department for Education-financed improvement programme. Unfortunately, during the demolition process, quantities of asbestos were discovered. This led to the headteacher, Mr Jonathan Osborn, very reluctantly having to close the school several weeks ago, on safety grounds, on the basis of strong advice from DfE officials.

It was originally hoped that all the demolition rubble containing the asbestos would be cleared, using specialist contractors, by Christmas. That would have allowed for the site to be cleaned and checked to ensure that asbestos was no longer present, and for the school to reopen on 3 January, at the beginning of the new term. At least, that was what both I and my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (Sir James Duddridge), whose constituents also attend the school, were originally told by the Department for Education. However, delays to the clearance process, caused in part by bad weather, have extended that process until at least mid-January.

My hon. Friend and I are now concerned that the timings are slipping and could yet slip even further. Regrettably, I detect no real sense of urgency among officials to fix the problem. The inconvenience is not just to pupils, many of whom have already had their education significantly disrupted due to covid, but to their parents, who have had to juggle commitments, including work, to keep their children at home, but who cannot necessarily rely on the good will of their employers forever.

Temporary arrangements are being organised to try to accommodate at least some pupils in neighbouring schools, but I do not want to see those arrangements somehow becoming semi-permanent while people play pass the parcel with important safety issues. There is thus a pressing need to get the site completely cleared of all the building rubble and thoroughly retested, so that Mr Osborn can with confidence safely reopen the school with minimum further delay. I urge Ministers to use their good offices to keep up the pressure to permit the school to reopen safely as soon as practically possible in the new year.

Secondly, turning to Rayleigh, the residents of King George’s Court have been plagued by persistent problems with their lift, which has now been out of operation for several months. That has led to not just inconvenience, but safety issues, not least when several weeks ago an elderly resident was taken to hospital by ambulance and had to be manhandled down multiple flights of stairs, as the lift was still out of action. I know that for a fact, as one of my local councillors, Councillor Cheryl Roe, was present and witnessed the event.

The block is run by a management company, FirstPort Property Services, which seems totally deaf to the pleas of the residents. I have written previously to Ms Kully Sahdra, the managing director of FirstPort and, on 27 November, I received a totally unsatisfactory reply from Mr Gareth Cayford, the company’s “Director, Retirement”, informing me that his company was “waiting for a part”, an excuse it has apparently been using for months.

The residents of King George’s Court are still paying their ground rent and have a perfect right to receive a decent service in return. I am sure the employees of FirstPort would not be happy if an elderly relative of theirs had to put up with such a situation, so I do not see why my constituents should have to put up with it either. Ironically, FirstPort’s corporate strapline is “for great customer service”—well, you could have fooled me. I therefore call on FirstPort today to stop prevaricating and make sure the requisite part is sourced and installed as soon as possible, before I take this matter up with the Secretary of State in the new year.

Thirdly, I raised the issue of the Rochford oak tree in the House in early November. In short, this popular ancient oak is facing demolition as part of a major new housing development off the Ashingdon Road by Bloor Homes. Having raised the matter in the Commons, I wrote to Mr John Bloor, the chairman of Bloor Homes, on 9 November 2022, to inform him of that as a courtesy, and to ask him and his company to redesign the junction on the entrance to the proposed estate, not just to preserve the tree, but to improve the junction’s safety, which lies directly opposite both an infants and a junior school. Despite having written personally to the chairman more than six weeks ago, I have not received even the basic courtesy of a two-line reply, let alone a substantive response. That is typical of Bloor Homes, which my constituents now routinely describe as “arrogant”, a description with which I completely agree.

I note that the Levelling Up Secretary has recommended that the Competition and Markets Authority conduct a formal market survey into the overconcentration of the UK house building industry, which in recent years has become a highly oligopolistic market, totally dominated by just a few major players. Based on my experience as a constituency MP, especially with Bloor Homes, that is something I would wholeheartedly support and, if and when such an inquiry commences—the sooner the better in my view—Bloor’s peers in the house building industry can probably thank the company for helping to provoke it.

Last but by no means least, we have another pressing issue at Southend Hospital: the amassing of ambulances in the car park. Last Friday, I visited the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust—EEAST—at its Essex sub-control centre in Chelmsford. While there, I discussed with the trust’s chief executive, Mr Tom Abell, and with several long-serving control room staff, the problem of severe pressures on ambulance crews. The best way I can summarise their reaction is to quote an experienced senior dispatcher, who, when I asked what the best solution was, replied:

“You have to do something about ambulance handovers at our hospitals and the people who are well enough to go home but can’t. If you cannot solve that, we are just going to be queuing up in hospital car parks forever.”

Like other MPs in South Essex, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth), I have been pushing for the £118 million of capital improvements that we were promised back in 2017, when the merger of Basildon, Broomfield and Southend Hospitals was first proposed. I repeat that plea to Ministers again today. In fairness to the hard-pressed paramedics and their frontline hospital colleagues, given the bureaucratic nature of the modern NHS, the chief responsibility for organising post-hospital accommodation lies with the new integrated care board. At a recent hearing of the Public Accounts Committee, I highlighted that the new Mid and South Essex ICB is underperforming and that its current leadership seriously need to raise their game. I also believe that senior officials at the regional level of the NHS in Cambridge—some of whom promised us the £118 million in the first place—now need to take a far more proactive interest in all this. In essence, I believe that the EEAST dispatcher was right: we need to do this urgently, especially as we move into the depths of winter.

Finally, after what has been a challenging year all round, I conclude by wishing you all the best in your new responsibilities, Mr Deputy Speaker, and by wishing Mr Speaker, all House staff and my constituents what I hope will yet be a merry Christmas and an even happier new year.