Councillor Howard Sykes MBE The intervention of Constitution and Devolution Minister Chloe Smith in January, about the local elections and the issues of campaigning and delivering of leaflets, was a major concern to me and one that made no sense at all.
Thousands of families rely on universal credit to pay for day-to-day essentials including food, clothing and utilities.
We are working more from home and, sorry to say, for longer periods of time.
We saw the Prime Minister announce in October the new three-tier system, under which every area of the country will be classified as ‘medium’, ‘high’ or ‘very high’ risk during the continuing COVID-19 crisis.
As I write this, I never thought I would be so pleased to see the back of a year as I am 2020.
As I predicted, test and trace has become a joke in many parts of the country.
Liberal Democrat councillors have been challenging government proposals on planning and local government reorganisation at their virtual annual conference.
We finally saw the Government’s planning reforms, sneaked out at midnight on a Wednesday, just before the start of the summer holidays.
The Prime Minster has demanded that we “build, build, build” our way out of the economic crisis caused by COVID-19.
The ill-thought out relaxation of lockdown, the Dominic Cummings debacle, and poorly considered last-minute announcements have contributed to an increase in the ‘R’ rate in my neck of the woods and in the South West.