Keeping it local with Colson Smith

Yvette Cooper MP and actor Colson Smith at Castleford Cricket Club
Yvette Cooper MP and actor Colson Smith at Castleford Cricket Club
From Coronation Street to Castleford Cricket Club, Colson Smith has done Castleford proud.

After going to school here in Cas and after years playing Craig Tinker on the cobbles, Colson is now broadcasting on Radio Leeds and is a great role model for young people round here. It was great to catch up with him last week and talk about all things Castleford as well as the great results the teams have been getting at the cricket club and their hopes of expansion next year too.

 

Many of the things we talked about involved Castleford town centre. Like towns across the country, over the last twenty years we’ve seen big retailers like Woolworths Marks and Spencer’s and Wilkos all go – partly because more and more people are shopping online.

At the same time under the Conservative Government local policing was heavily cut back, so town centre antisocial behaviour and shop theft all went up and that affected us locally too. I know how important these issues are to people. Here in Castleford, we’ve always had strong communities and a real sense of pride in our history – but without support for town centres, local pride ends up being undermined.

 

That’s why I made it my top priority when I became Labour Home Secretary fifteen months ago to get neighbourhood police back on the beat. As a result of the work we did, there are 3,000 more neighbourhood police on the beat this year – including doubling the number here in Castleford. That means for the first time in over a decade we now have seven days a week neighbourhood patrols round here.

 

But local shops and businesses also need a boost. The Government’s small business plan includes new reforms to business rates to help high street shops. At the same time Ministers are bringing in new powers for councils to seize boarded shops and bring them back into use, and to block new betting shops, vape stores or fake barbers if those are causing problems in town.

 

Wakefield Council have also this month announced they are introducing two hours of free parking, while the long-awaited demolition of the Crimea pub is opening up the riverside and new improvements are planned to Henry Moore Square this winter.

 

One of the things Colson asked me about was how local constituency issues like this fit with a job like Home Secretary or my new role as Foreign Secretary. The truth is that local constituency work carries on just as it always did, and the issues we face round here that end up being on my mind in the national work I do too.

 

So when I was Home Secretary I made town centre policing a priority. And now as Foreign Secretary I’m working on getting international agreements on everything from trade and jobs to illegal migration enforcement that help us here at home (and even occasionally discussing Castleford Tigers results with foreign ministers from countries like Australia too!).

 

My priorities nationally aren’t removed from the concerns of hardworking people round here, they are often directly related.

 

Back at the cricket club in Castleford, Colson and others are providing a brilliant community resource. Whatever work I do nationally or internationally, I’ll always be supporting our local community organisations, businesses and clubs.

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