Column by the leader of Stroud District Council, Doina Cornell.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has just had a name change and will become the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

This week our Levelling Up Working Group will meet for the first time to start work on a bid for investment into the centre of Stroud with a focus around the railway station and Wallbridge area.

I’d love to see us win funds to make the station truly accessible and its surrounds a real focal point for anyone arriving into our district. Whether that alone can be classed as ‘levelling up’ is harder to quantify - true levelling up would put people at its heart, and start by helping those working families who are bearing the hardest burden this autumn as bills rise, the universal credit pandemic uplift ends, and the pandemic continues to impact on local businesses. True levelling up would fund public services properly again after a decade of declining funding. At 30 September’s Strategy & Resources Committee we shall be considering the council’s budget strategy for the year ahead, set at a time of uncertainty regarding local government finance.

What is in a name? Our consultation reviewing street or building names and monuments, to ensure they represent local people’s values and a modern, inclusive council, has now closed. The review panel, drawn from community representatives, councillors and historians will carefully consider the 1600 responses, before making recommendations later in the year.

Last week I attended the Covid-19 Outbreak Engagement Board and heard that Gloucestershire has some of the highest rates of vaccination in the country - testimony to hard work by NHS staff supported by volunteers, and the creative and welcoming way they’ve gone about the task. If you have received an invite from your GP to get vaccinated just follow the instructions or look out for a drop-in clinic. The Gloucestershire NHS COVID portal has lots of information available to help answer any questions you may have. Just search ‘COVID vaccinations in Gloucestershire’.