Southend MP discusses Westcliff civic pride campaign
The campaign 'We Love Westcliff' aims to restore civic pride in the area
David Burton-Sampson, MP for Southend West and Leigh in South Essex, has been discussing his local campaign in Westcliff to increase civic pride there.
He has noted challenges in the area like fly-tipping, potholes and anti-social behaviour, and says all of them can be fixed.
"We always get comments about: 'look there's so much dumping in Westcliff, there's so much rubbish on the streets, there's so much anti-social behaviour in Westcliff', and all I hear is: 'Oh yeah we can't solve these problems.' Well yes we can and I'm not going to take 'No we can't'."
In interview with Greatest Hits Radio Essex News he said that "persistent" comments were being made to him about local problems in Westcliff. He said this "community movement" was launched to come up with solutions to issues and start tackling them.
"Over a series of meetings since Christmas last year, we have put together a real, strong program of how we are going to start to fix some of these issues."
The MP said that an impact day was hosted last month, where residents shared their views on the campaign and what needs to be addressed in the local area.
One of the next steps for the campaign is to look at local alleyways in Westcliff.
"I'm working on trying to get some funding so that we can maybe permanently gate those alleyways so that we can have a permanent solution to stop people dumping in those alleyways. And from there we take that further and we start looking at how we make the alleyways attractive places."
"This is only the beginning, but we have got to raise the profile of Westcliff. It's not a place of dumping, it's not a place of anti-social behaviour, it's a fantastic place to live, where people are proud to live there."
"The most important thing though is that this program is community led. Yes I am the instigator, I'm the fire starter, I'm the person who said 'It's got to be fixed', but ultimately it has to be the community working together that get the long-term fixes happening.
"I'll be handing this project over to the community to run once its at the stage that it's ready to hand over to the community to run."