A number of concerned residents have been in touch with me about the future of the West Swindon Post Office based in the shopping centre.

I have been in touch with the national Post Office organisation, and they have assured me that they are committed to maintaining a branch and are working hard to secure an alternative way of providing their important service.

Alongside local councillors in West Swindon, I will be working closely with the Post Office on this important issue and will of course keep residents updated on our progress.

Last Friday I spoke at the launch of the Innovation Centre for Applied and Sustainable Technologies (iCAST) in the Carriage Works. The iCAST is a new, unique knowledge exchange facility set up to kick-start a step-change in the UK industrial strategy for translating sustainable chemical technologies into clean growth.

iCAST is funded through a £17 million partnership between the Universities of Bath and Oxford, the High Value Manufacturing Catapult’s National Composites Centre, the Centre for Process Innovation, and the Swindon & Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership.

The Carriage Works is the perfect location for this new addition to our local economy and I look forward to working closely with them over the coming months and years.

In further good news for our town, it was announced last week that organisations in South Swindon, including Old Town Sounds Ltd and Revolution Performing Arts, are set to receive grants totalling over £118,000 as part of the government’s Culture Recovery Fund.

This fund was established at the height of the pandemic to help tackle the crisis facing our most loved cultural organisation and heritage sites. I have pushed hard to ensure that Swindon received its fair share of this money to support our brilliant culture sector and I am pleased to see that this is happening.

On Saturday I joined councillor Lourenco Fernandes to discuss parking issues impacting residents across Central Ward – including specific concerns about school parking along Shrivenham Road.

We will both be pushing the council to explore all possible solutions to help reduce inconsiderable parking across the ward. I will keep residents updated on our progress.

As the local Member of Parliament, I am always keen to hear from fellow residents about the local and national concerns which matter most to them and to find out what you would like me and my team to focus our efforts on.

That is why I have relaunched a survey on my website to encourage residents to have their voice heard on a number of important topics – please take a few minutes to fill out the survey and help ensure that my team and I are focusing our efforts on what matter most to you.

You can find the survey by visiting www.robertbuckland.co.uk/MyPlanSurvey