David Ruffley

David Ruffley has today expressed his concern at further delays to the Bury St Edmunds Park & Ride scheme.

An important Park & Ride meeting on Friday 21 November, at which a proposed Park & Ride scheme for Bury was to be presented to stakeholders, has been postponed. The meeting, organised by Suffolk County Council, is now unlikely to take place until the New Year and no date has yet been set.

David Ruffley MP will be performing the official opening of Needham Market's new Almshouses at Drift Court on Friday 21 November at 12 noon.

The Alexander and Maws Almshouses have served the Needham Market community since the nineteenth century. In 1980 the two buildings became part of the Almshouse Fund within the Needham Market and Barking Welfare Charities, although some renovations took place in the early 1980s it has long been accepted that the accommodation fell short of modern standards for housing elderly people.

David Ruffley has welcomed the long overdue decision by the Government to re-award the contract for the Post Office Card Account to the Post Office. The Government has announced the cancellation of the procurement process which it initiated in 2006.

While welcoming the decision, David said:

'It is clear that the process has been deeply destabilising for the Post Office network, especially our local rural post offices which have lived with the threat of closure this year.

POLICE officers are being forced to spend up to half their working day on paperwork rather than patrolling the streets, it was revealed yesterday.

Despite Government claims about reducing bureaucracy, Home Office figures showed that a tide of socalled 'incident-related paperwork' is keeping officers off the beat.

The term refers largely to forms relating to arrests or interventions such as stop-and-search.

MINISTERS WERE at the centre of a row last night over the use of taxpayers' money to fund television documentaries.

The Government has spent almost pounds 2 million to fund programmes that are all but indistinguishable from regular shows, The Sunday Telegraph has established.

But unlike normal documentaries, the programmes are commissioned by ministers with the purpose of showing their policies or activities in a sympathetic light.

David Ruffley has made a final plea to the Government to keep Stowmarket Jobcentre Plus office open.

The Jobcentre Plus office in Stowmarket is proposed for closure under the Government's current review of jobcentre services in Suffolk. Following analysis of the consultation responses, the final recommendation is expected to go to the Minister for a decision this month.

David Ruffley MP will today be performing the official opening of Willowbridge Labels' new premises in Rougham.

Willowbridge was formed 25 years ago and purchased by Denny Bros in 2005. They have invested £100,000 in much needed new equipment and revitalised the performance of the business.

The new premises allow the business to continue to grow and present an improved image to clientele.

David said:

David Ruffley MP visited King Edward VI School on Friday 7 November to witness first hand the impact of the Sky Sports Living for Sport initiative.

Sky Sports Living for Sport is an initiative organised by the Youth Sport Trust in partnership with BSkyB, which targets young people aged 11 to 16 who are at risk of opting out of school life, either through poor attendance or lack of confidence.

Now in its fifth year, the highly successful Sky Sports Living for Sport scheme has involved some 17,000 young people in over 600 schools across England, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

David Ruffley MP has today slammed the Highways Agency over two major safety issues on the A14 in his constituency- the subsidence of the road near Rougham and standing water on stretches of the newly improved road at Haughley.

In October, David took the Highways Agency to task over the safety problems and demanded answers from the Chief Executive, Graham Dalton, on when they would be rectified.

David Ruffley MP has today spoken of his delight ahead of Bury St Edmunds' Christmas Lights being switched on at 7pm this evening.

At the start of the year there were doubts over the future of the lights and the Town Council's then Chairman, Councillor Roy Bebbington, had pledged to sell the lights off.