THE last few weeks have been rather frenzied, reflecting the need to pack in as much Parliamentary business as possible before the conference recess.

As I have said before, I would much rather see party conferences held over successive weekends but in the meantime I’m taking advantage of the lull in votes to eliminate my backlog of casework and press for more action on local healthcare and hospital services.

To that end, I met the Secretary of State for Health last week to review the situation at Savernake hospital in Marlborough and discuss the impact that the Private Finance Initiative is having on hospitals across the country which are struggling to pay the high interest costs of PFI.

I was somewhat reassured that this is being taken very seriously by ministers but we need action now to stop any more services being lost locally.

* The government’s recent planning proposals are generating a lot of emails and letters and I am staying very close to the discussion.

Like my fellow Wiltshire residents, I love this green and rural county and do not want to see anything that looks like a charter for developers.

But it is also the case that we have both a serious local housing shortage (especially of smaller, affordable homes) and huge developments, dumped down or filled in, with little thinking about the underlying infrastructure needed to create sustainable communities.

Many of these are refused by the council initially, but developers were able to go straight to appeal with reference to the Whitehallmandated Regional Spatial Strategy.

Under the new proposals, the local plan will be sacrosanct, ANOBs, SSSIs and Green Belts will remain protected and there will be new protections for the vital bits of greenery in our towns and villages.

I have put a Myth Busters document on my website, www.claireperry.org.uk" to answer more questions on the issue and welcome more letters on this topic as I think it is so important to get it right.