Now that Parliament is on recess for the summer, it is great to be back in North Cornwall full-time working on constituency matters.

Following on from my meeting with the postmaster in Marshgate, I held a meeting with management from the Post Office to discuss the situation in Wadebridge. I made it quite clear to them that a loss of Post Office services for the town is unacceptable and that there must be an interim solution in place while the Post Office looks for a permanent site. The Post Office is a private business and so they can, of course, choose to base what they do on market forces. However, there are many people in Wadebridge and the surrounding area who want to use their services.

My suggestion was that the new postmaster in Marshgate should be allowed to bring the mobile service he runs in St Breward to Wadebridge for one day per week. At our meeting, he expressed an interest in doing just this.

The Post Office was concerned that a mobile service would be oversubscribed as it usually services around 20 customers during an afternoon in a village. They felt that the number would be much higher in a town like Wadebridge. I responded that although this may be the case, it is far better than having no service at all.

It was off to Launceston for more visits on Friday where I was pleased to catch up with the team at Seetec Pluss, which is an employee-owned company that helps thousands of people back into work. They deliver the Department for Work and Pensions Restart Scheme and Work and Health Programme, and the Department for Education National Careers Service across Cornwall. I was present for the opening of this centre a couple of years ago and it was great to see how things have come along since then. Currently, the claimant rate for Job Seekers Allowance in North Cornwall is 1,450, which is an unemployment rate of 2.7 per cent, and well below the national average of four per cent. I’m also encouraged that the rate for young people between 18-24 is continuing to drop.

Young people shouldn’t feel forced to leave North Cornwall due to a lack of training or education opportunities, and therefore skills and training are one of my top priorities for North Cornwall.