CALLING all mums and dads: if your child is heading back to school in the next week, there are some important changes you might want to know about.
Firstly, Labour is helping families save money by limiting schools to three branded uniform items, plus a secondary school tie.
This gives parents more choice when shopping around and could save you £50 per child each year.
Six more schools in our area will also be getting Best Start Free Breakfast Clubs.
I’ve been working hard with the Labour government to get more breakfast clubs into our schools and I’m really pleased to be delivering results for local families
Barrow Island Community Primary School, St George’s CofE School, Victoria Academy, South Cumbria Pupil Referral Service, Black Combe Junior School, and Brisbane Park Infant School are in this next wave of the scheme and will be offering a club that is free to parents and provides 30 minutes of childcare each morning.
They join Waberthwaite CofE School, Lindal and Marton Primary School, and Ormsgill Nursery and Primary School who were part of the early adopters of the club. I will keep pushing for more schools to be added.
A healthy, filling breakfast has been proven to help children to begin the day ready to learn and gives them the best chance to succeed.
Once the national rollout is complete, every primary school child will have access to a free breakfast at school.
On top of that Labour is making improvements to free school meals, meaning hundreds of thousands more children will get the extra support they need.
If your household receives any amount of Universal Credit, your child is now eligible for free school meals – helping families to save money and making sure no child goes hungry.
This move will save parents up to £500 every year, lifting 100,000 children out of poverty, drive higher attainment, improved behaviour and better outcomes.
Labour is determined to build an education system that breaks through the glass ceiling so that background is no barrier and if you work hard, you can get on in life.
Finally, let me also say something about housebuilding.
The need for more affordable housing in our area is at the top of many people’s agendas.
And with almost 180,000 children growing up without a permanent home, this government wants to do everything possible to get councils building at scale once again to turn the crisis around.
The problem of a lack of affordable housing needs to be gripped, and that’s why Labour has kickstarted our record £39bn Social and Affordable Homes Programme.
It will support the delivery of more than 70,000 homes, with nearly two-thirds being genuinely affordable social rent homes.
In Barrow a milestone was reached in January of this year when Westmorland and Furness Council appointed Muse Places, supported by supply chain partners, as its strategic development partner for Marina Village – which aims to provide around 1,350 new homes, a nature conservation area and new public open spaces.
The Marina Village project has taken far too long to reach this stage – but now residents can expect to see faster progress.
I have joined local Labour councillors in repeatedly emphasised to council officers that a significant number of the houses must be affordable homes.
Some pace is also expected to be injected into the Queens Park house-building project in Millom where plans for 47 homes have been lodged with Cumberland Council.
Andy Burnham correctly points out that councils built this country out of a housing crisis once before and with the proper backing and trusted to get on with it, they can do it again.
As your MP I will be keeping a close eye on developments because Labour is determined to put in the hard yards and make sure more affordable homes are being built.
Let’s bring back hope across the country.