Welcome to my March roundup where you can read all about what I’ve been up to for the past month. As your Member of Parliament, I’ve continued to work on various issues raised by fellow residents via email, telephone, at my surgeries and while out knocking on doors to speak to residents across Chester.

It’s been another varied month as your MP. I’ve met with hundreds of constituents and various community organisations. I also held my first Housing Surgery, bringing Sanctuary Housing and Cheshire West Homes together to meet with constituents experiencing issues with their social housing.

March also featured English Tourism Week, I was fortunate to visit Chester Castle to see the amazing work undertaken by English Heritage to restore this asset to our city. I can’t recommend a visit to the Castle highly enough, you can watch my video promoting tourism in Chester here. You can check opening times for Chester Castle on their website.

As always, if you have any issues or questions about Government and Opposition policies I can help with, please drop me a line at samantha.dixon.mp@parliament.uk

This month saw us celebrate International Women’s Day. A special day to thank the important women in our lives and ensure their contribution to our lives in valued. I had the honour of addressing many inspirational women at Chester Town Hall. I’d like to thank all the amazing women who attended (and those who were unable to attend), especially our female councillors and fabulous Lord Mayor, Cllr Sheila Little, who helped organise this inspiring event.

In Westminster I took the opportunity to meet with UK Men’s Sheds. This fantastic organisation helps tackle the issues of men’s mental health in a positive way. This includes at their Chester branch and others across the country.

One of the ongoing issues faced by Chester residents is the continued poor service from Avanti West Coast. I have continued to raise this with Avanti, meeting recently with Managing Director, Andy Mellors (pictured above) and other representatives to discuss the ongoing poor services to Chester.

This comes as Northern mayors and council leaders on the Transport for the North board voted unanimously ask Government to strip Avanti of its West Coast Main Line route after “unacceptable” levels of service.

Following the meeting, I have written to Avanti West Coast again reflecting on our discussions with the train operator, you can view this here. In Parliament I have also joined with Cheshire West and Chester Council Leader, Louise Gittins at a GrowthTrack360 meeting to promote greater cross-border transport connectivity across the North West and North Wales.

I had a great time at the Holi festival in Chester at the weekend. Every month I’m always surprised by how many fantastic events a city of our size puts on. Chester is bursting with culture and I’m grateful to be able to live and represent such amazing residents.

Another amazing group of Chester residents I represent are our fantastic local school children. I had the honour of hosting a Question and Answer session at Hoole CoE Primary School. The children had lots of questions about life as a Member of Parliament and had their finger on the pulse of the nation asking questions about the cost-of-living crisis. Hopefully some of these enthusiastic children will take up the baton of public service and possibly become the politicians of tomorrow.

Last week I hosted my first specific Housing Surgery. This event brought together my office, local councillors, Sanctuary Housing and West Cheshire Homes representatives to see as many constituents as possible. The event was a success with more than 40 constituents having the opportunity to raise the issues with their social housing directly with Sanctuary Housing. This compliments my usual constituency surgeries with social housing issues forming the bulk of the casework I deal with.

This month I had the honour of being appointed as the newest member of the Treasury Select Committee. It is a huge privilege to serve on such an important committee, my first meeting presented the opportunity to question the Chancellor of the Exchequer on this year’s Budget. I look forward to future sessions on the committee ensuring that the Treasury and other organisations deliver for people in Chester and across the country.

Following one of my surgery meetings this month I took the opportunity to visit Swettenham’s Chemist. Dawn and the team are always busy taking care of the health of our community. It was also interesting to learn of the issues currently faced by local chemists and other businesses. If you have a local business please send me an email to highlight the issues your business faces so I can help try and resolve them to help you deliver economic growth for our area.

As always, I’d like to end this newsletter by thanking you for taking an interest in my work on your behalf. I’d encourage you to share this newsletter with friends and family and I’m always happy to receive feedback on the content of this newsletter. If you need my help please email me at samantha.dixon.mp@parliament.uk or arrange a surgery on my website here.