The Wolds Weighton East Riding Councillors column: We’d love to hear the views of our residents on local issues

Significant investment is planned for Market Weighton, providing a major boost to the town’s sport and employment potential.

Although still in the early planning stages, these major schemes, already announced and welcomed by your Conservative Ward councillors, will give the town a major lift as we move out of the pandemic and into brighter times.

One proposal is for a full-size artificial 3G soccer pitch to be installed at Market Weighton School, providing a much-needed facility for local youngsters and others from nearby clubs, including those at Holme on Spalding Moor and Shiptonthorpe.

Interest in coaching and training programmes has also come from York City and the recently rejuvenated Hull City.

A Lidl supermarket is planned for land on York Road, along with more housing, and more recently we heard that plans have been submitted for a major industrial, business and research development on what is currently unused grassland adjacent to the Britcom site.

The Conservative Group at East Riding Council continues to work hard to promote this region as a great place to live, work and invest and our efforts are clearly paying dividends.

On the face of it, these schemes together represent good news for the town and local villages but it remains our job as ward councillors to scrutinise the proposals carefully and to identify any potentially adverse impacts they might have on our residents’ lives. Traffic and traffic management will be top of our list of priorities and we will be having talks with our highways team to discuss this point in detail.

But while we will have our own views on these proposals, it is important we hear the views of our residents as well.

Communication is key in all decision-making.

In Wolds Weighton, we have 28 Parish Councils, ranging from larger villages such as Melbourne and Seaton Ross to the tiny communities of North and South Cliffe and Londesborough.

At the heart of the ward is of course Market Weighton itself.

Many of our rural communities share similar concerns, such as public transport, broadband delivery, speeding traffic, while in Market Weighton issues tend to focus more on local health services, over development and traffic.

It is our job, in the first instance, to be accessible to our residents so that they have an effective route for their complaints to County Hall.

We cannot always guarantee the response our resident would like but we can always guarantee that their concerns are raised and listened to.

We believe we communicate well with our Parish Councils but it is often the one-to-one link with a resident that is most needed.

In the coming year we aim to further improve our communications by continuing to use the excellent service provided by the Pocklington Post but we also want to hear from our villages, our residents.

Would more village drop-ins be useful?

Can we contribute to village newsletters?

Should we post more information on social media?

○ Anyone who would like to raise any Market Weighton-based issues with their ward councillors can email [email protected] or [email protected].

They would love to hear from you.