Fighting for our facilities
Shops, our swimming pool, community centres, our railway, our recycling centre are all vital to the life and wellbeing of our residents. Local MPs and even councillors can sometimes be compromised by their party positions or other geographical areas in their thinking. Not the SWFRP. We will always fight for what is best for South Woodham
How much do you care about our leisure centre, our doctors surgery, our police station, our bus services, our railway ticket office?
If the answer is a lot then you are like us.
What many of us don't realise is that many of the facilities we have today were fought hard for by residents in the past, including by our members. Ian Roberts for example, when he was a Councillor responsible for leisure in the Borough in the early 2000s, laid the groundwork which saw our leisure centre and swimming pool built.
We had been campaigning for new car park improvements at Compass Gardens which were finally made in 2022. We campaigned for the saving of South Woodham's rail ticket office which was successful, albeit there was a national change of heart by the Government which made it so. However partly we think because of local groups like our putting up so much opposition. We have also tried to fend off a new unpopular booking system for the waste recycling centre which adds unneccessary inconvenience to peoples' lives.
But we're not wedded to the past and don't always assume the way things 'used to be' are better. Recently the towns circular Sunday service was axed but we didn't object, instead raising what we think are pertinent questions in the latest bus consultation about why there aren't bus services in the town which take people where they need to go like Maldon, Basildon or Broomfield Hospital.
And we don't always just fly in to an issue. There are, after all, only a few of us, so we try and hold regular polls on issues so that we can find out what you, the reisdents think.
It's this 'working together' with residents as well as our experience from the past, and our lack of having to 'tow the party line' on centralising investment in Chelmsford, that makes us uniquely placed to get what's best for South Woodham.