THIS week started with a trip to London to attend a meeting at the Department of Health on palliative care for children.

I was following up on the question I asked the Prime Minister several months ago with a view to establishing greater across-theboard certainty for hospices around the amount of funding they can expect to receive.

One of the great virtues of our system is the Rolls Royce service that we receive from the civil service.

However, on this occasion, it seems that the current review is holding up interim progress and officials are unwilling to ‘second-guess’ the likely outcome and highlight Wiltshire’s best practice – a missed opportunity in my view. I intend to explore this further when I return to Parliament.

On Wednesday I was again on the road to London before 6am to attend meetings with Public Health England to keep tabs on what progress is being made with decision-making on the future of PHE, Porton.

I was reminded once again that just under three years ago I was told a decision would be made at Christmas (2010).

The rest of my week has been spent attending to correspondence and pursuing constituency casework.

I was pleased to see new proposals come from Eric Pickles this week on ways to reinvigorate the high street by introducing a period of grace for shoppers to park near shops.

There are a number of details of this policy to be agreed and it will be for the council to decide how to apply them.

However, as consumer patterns of behaviour evolve it is important that central government does all it can to assist the high street.

I was delighted this week to receive the news that Salisbury District Hospital has made a successful bid for additional central government funding for dementia care. The £800,000 grant will be used to make wards more dementia friendly.

This follows on from immensely positive changes to home and community-based dementia care being implemented by the new clinical commissioning group, which have been warmly welcomed by the Alzheimer’s Society.

I have long felt that in this area we owe it to ourselves to take account of our demographics and make provision for people at all stages of the disease in a way that enables them to manage and mitigate their own symptoms, retaining their independence and quality of life for as long as possible.

Huge strides are being made in that direction but I want to see the good work continue until we have cutting edge dementia care provision that sets a precedent for other areas to follow.