Happy New Year. Thank you for taking the time to read the January edition of my newsletter. May I wish you and your family every happiness and success in 2025. I have already been working hard this year to champion the issues that I know are important in our constituency.
Around the constituency
My staff team is now fully in place and they have been doing a tremendous job catching up with residents’ emails. Helping residents with their concerns is the most vital and rewarding part of my role, and I hope you will get in touch if there is anything I, and my team, can assist you with.
We are currently lodged in a temporary office on Station Lane in Witney and in February, we will be moving into a permanent office at Elmfield in Witney. If there is anything I can do to help, we can best be reached by emailing charlie.maynard.mp@parliament.uk.
Please do get in touch if you would like to book a slot at my weekly online surgery. Additionally, if you represent an organisation or business that you would like me to visit please do contact me and my team will be happy to arrange this.
The year has started off with lots of interesting visits, enabling me to see the good work going on in our constituency as well as hearing about issues and challenges that people are facing.
My first visit of 2025 was to Edgars, a planning consultancy firm in Witney. Here we had some interesting conversations around apprenticeships and how the revised National Planning Policy Framework could impact us locally.
Chris Hayter lorries are a familiar sight on our roads and this local family-owned transportation and warehousing company is a large employer operating across the UK. I met their Managing Director at their Witney HQ and depot and we had some engaging discussions around current issues.
My first week ended with a lovely visit to Hailey Primary School, a small school of 93 pupils and 4 teachers. Despite their size, the work they do is impressive. However, they are challenged by school funding, with their budget under increasing pressure and especially with the growing number of pupils with special needs.
As always, it was a pleasure to attend Witney MP Watch’s Climate Matters meeting. We had a really interesting conversation about Parliamentary systems and the plans for a railway to Oxford. I was asked lots of questions and had some good chats afterwards.
A big thank you to Witney Rotary for such an enjoyable meeting where I was asked to recount what being MP for Witney has been like and sharing my goals for the future. Again, lots of questions and a great group of people working hard to raise funds for charity.
I met with Deb Smit, head of Special Educational Needs (SEN) for Oxfordshire and Toby Coules, who manages complaints for children's services. The demand for SEN provision in the constituency is far greater that the supply of services to manage that demand. I learned a lot talking to Deb and Toby about the scale of the problem and we spoke about how we could build a pathway to fixing it, although there will be no easy solutions.
On 16 January we had the by-elections for the Carterton Town Council. Ahead of that I was out canvassing for our excellent candidates. We won one seat in the Shillbrook ward, but lost out in Upavon. The campaign run-in to the election was good and lays the foundations for the forthcoming County Council elections in May, where Carterton will be a key battleground. A huge thank you to everyone who came out to help during the campaign and on polling day and especially to our candidates, Carrie Lincoln, Marie Stimpson and Brian Barrett.
Advance Housing supports people with learning difficulties and mental health conditions by providing housing and community related services. Its head office is in Witney but it operates over a much larger area with offices in London, Leicester, Cornwall and Devon. I had a very interesting meeting with its CEO, Julie Layton and some Advanced Housing customers. We discussed challenges they faced with funding and other issues.
I think it’s really important, as a local MP, to be out and about and meeting people in their own communities and hearing about their concerns. And so last Saturday I set off on my third constituency walk, starting at 7am from Pinkhill Lock, near Eynsham.
Stanton Harcourt was my first stop and here I was joined on my walk by district councillor Steve Cosier and others for breakfast at the Harcourt Arms. We chatted to many people as we made our way to Bablock Hythe, then on to Northmoor where the Saturday market was in full swing, before arriving at the Black Horse in Standlake for lunch.
Afterwards we walked through Cote and Shifford and on to Aston, our final destination. Here we watched the Men’s team play football and then had a much-needed cup of tea at Aston Pottery. Thank you to everyone who we spoke to and all those who joined us along the way. By the end of the day, I was very tired and my voice was hoarse, but it was absolutely brilliant and I’m looking forward to my next walk.
In Parliament
In Parliament I spent much of January focussing on the Water (Special Measures Bill). I was delighted to be one of just 17 MPs appointed to the Committee whose job is to scrutinise the Bill line by line and table amendments to improve it.
As a long-time campaigner for water regulation, I certainly didn’t hold back! Along with my colleague Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat’s Environment Spokesperson, we tabled 44 amendments to toughen up rules on the conduct of water companies, to protect our lakes, rivers and beaches from pollution and make sure companies face real consequences when they fail.
Among our proposed changes were that clear pollution reduction targets should be added to the Bill, so we can measure progress and hold water companies to account against them.
We also called for water companies to be stopped from using offshore holding companies and other accounting tricks to disguise the financial mess they’re in, and to bring in a fixed timeline by which we should ban bonuses for water company bosses who fail to get a grip on pollution.
Regrettably Labour and Conservative MPs on the Committee did not support any of the amendments we put forward, so for now the Bill continues to offer much weaker protections for our water than I would like. However, there are further stages the Bill still needs to pass through before it becomes law, so along with my Liberal Democrat colleagues I’ll continue to push for important improvements to it.
Also on the topic of water, I took the opportunity earlier in the month to raise the issue of the Environment Agency’s main river designation with the Minister for Water and Flooding. This has caused enormous problems in Northmoor and Bablock Hythe and contributes to the terrible flooding residents in the area have experienced. I will be following up with the minister to try and get this unnecessary bureaucracy unravelled!
I have also continued to enjoy my role on the Business and Trade Select Committee, where I get the chance to question ministers on how we can tackle the cost of living crisis and get our economy growing again. I have asked the Minister for Trade about our free trade agreements and why we should be seeking to rejoin the Customs Union if they are serious about getting growth back on track.
As part of the B&T Committee scrutiny of the Employment Rights Bill, we also spoke with representatives of Shein, the enormous fast-fashion company who have faced serious allegations of poor labour practices. They were incredibly evasive with the Committee and I would be extremely concerned if they were allowed to list on the London Stock Exchange (as they have proposed to do) if they cannot answer basic questions.
With very best wishes,
Charlie Maynard MP
Witney