I wrote to the Department of Transport of behalf of all those who contacted me and have been assured the Transport Ministers are committed to improving the levels of service at the Dartford Crossing for the millions of motorists who make use of it. This includes considering lifting the barriers when congestion is particularly severe.

Of course, many people would still prefer for the Crossing charges to be removed.  Unfortunately, I cannot make any pledges to remove the tolls at this stage. Given the state of the public finances we inherited from the previous government, we are undertaking a comprehensive spending review and all decisions with a cost to the public finances are dependent on the outcome of that exercise.

However, I do believe that it is crucial to try to resolve immediate concerns around the way the crossing is currently run. This includes consideration of how to streamline the way tolls are paid in order to reduce the congestion problems that blight the lives of thousands of local people.

I am told the priority for improvements at the Crossing is to address the current levels of congestion by making use of newer technology to collect the current charge for using the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge or tunnels to allow a better flow of traffic and reduce delays. At the moment, I understand the Highways Agency has been asked to develop a costed plan for the introduction of such technology.

It may take a little time, but I am confident efforts are being made to ease the congestion which causes so much frustration to so many motorists.

Big Society encompasses three key strands. There is social action with people giving their time, effort, even money, to causes around them with the government fostering and supporting a new culture of volunteering. Secondly, there is the need for public service reform. We want to get rid of centralised bureaucracy that wastes money and undermines morale and we’ve got to give professionals more freedom and open up public services to new providers like charities, social enterprises and private companies so we get more innovation and diversity.  Lastly, we need community empowerment, bringing about people in neighbourhoods who feel if they club together and get involved they can shape the world around them.

Practical measures, include our drive to enable parents and others to set up schools where perhaps good school places are scarce. But we think we can go much further, for example, enabling businesses to provide training for jobseekers or allowing charities to help rehabilitate offenders.

We cannot shrink the centre of government and expect community groups and individuals to take up the slack. We will have to play a role in kick-starting the Big Society by delivering the decentralisation of powers, so that people have the information they need to take on a bigger role in society and finally finance, paying public service providers by results thereby encouraging value for money and innovation at the same time.

Smaller organisations must not miss out as they don’t have access to start-up capital so government has a crucial role to play in bridging the gap and in connecting private capital to investment in social projects by creating a Big Society Bank.

The Big Society Bank will help finance social enterprises, charities and voluntary groups through intermediaries using every penny of dormant bank and building society account money allocated to England. These unclaimed assets, alongside the private sector investment that we will leverage, will mean that the Big Society Bank will, over time, make available hundreds of millions of pounds of new finance to some of our most dynamic social organisations. ENDS

 A prominent pledge in our manifesto was to give councils more powers to stop unwanted ‘garden grabbing’. Following planning regulations introduced by John Prescott in 2000, there was a dramatic increase in development on private gardens.

The lack of affordable housing of all types is a major issue in this country. But garden grab developments, which rarely exceed the size threshold at which affordable dwellings have to be provided, do very little to meet this need. Indeed, they displace effort and attention from genuine regeneration projects and their impact on neighbourhoods can be profoundly negative – destroying green space, reducing biodiversity, degrading architectural character and placing strain on local infrastructure.

Nevertheless, local planning authorities have frequently found themselves powerless to stop garden grab developments. This was a consequence of the previous Government’s planning rules (contained within PPG3, now PPS3), which classified private gardens as ‘brownfield’ land, meaning they had the same status in planning as industrial wasteland. In addition, one-size-fits-all Whitehall density targets required development at 30 dwellings per hectare, preventing councils from ensuring the right level for individual local neighbourhoods. This has allowed developers to overturn planning rejections on appeal, undermining the ability of councils to act in the best interests of their communities.

We have delivered on our pledge to restore common sense, introducing new planning guidelines that have immediate effect. They remove gardens from the definition of brownfield land and scrap the Whitehall-set density target. This will give councils real power and discretion to determine the appropriate level of development for each part of their local authority area, allowing high density building if they wish and ensuring that more family homes with gardens can be built in new developments.

We have maintained Green Belt protection, assisted by the abolition of Regional Spatial Strategies which now gives councils the discretion on how to plan and shape the future of their community. Affordable housing rules are unaffected; our reforms will help increase the amount of family homes available to all. These progressive and permissive changes are another step in decentralising power and protecting the local environment.

We now have the excellent Brentwood Community Hospital facility in the constituency which offers a free bus service from the town centre to its premises, and enough free car parking for those who need it as they attend the hospital for appointments.

However, most of our hospital services are located outside the Brentwood and Ongar constituency so trips for appointments or to visits incapacitated friends and family usually mean a bus or car journey. And for those choosing to travel by car, there is now often a charge to park in the hospital car parking facilities.

In a perfect world, charges such as these would not exist.  I am aware, from the emails and letters, sent to me that this is a frustrating issue for many people who have to make regular hospital visits for appointments or to visit family and friends.

However, it is important to remember that hospital trusts use parking fees to fund patient services. Especially now, in a time when money is so tight, the resources to fund this subsidy would have to come from other areas of hospitals’ budgets, potentially putting the quality and efficiency of care provided by front-line services at risk. The new Government has no plans to press forward with the previous administration’s plans to abolish hospital car parking charges. 

I fear that the previous Government’s scheme would have lead to widespread abuse by non-patients, particularly as many hospitals are located in very central areas. There was no indication from the previous Government as to how this scheme might be regulated, in order to prevent this. 

My Government Department, Communities and Local Government, will keep me busy with red boxes full of documents to read and letters to sign arriving in my home in the constituency daily. However, without the constraints of having to Monday to Thursday in Westminster for briefings, meetings and votes, I will have more time to spend visiting local businesses, organisations and people.

Last Friday was a busy day of visits, starting at the Tourist Centre in Brentwood where local author Frances Clamp was signing her recently published book about the town. This tome is an excellent read (I even feature in it) and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of Brentwood. Many friends called into wish Frances well while I was there and it was great to see the Tourit Centre buzzing with excitement.

From the town centre it was on to meet with Jenny Grant from Mitchells and Butler which owns eight eating establishments across the constituency, and the manager of the Nags Head on Brook Street, Eve Oliver, at the restaurant for a discussion about the current trade and industry concerns.

The afternoon was spend in the newest part of the constituency, North Weald, meeting the proprietor of Tylers Green Stores, Bhavin Patel.  It was great to meet Mr. Patel who is offering a fantastic service to the community of North Weald with his range of specialist tobacco, wines and magazines.

I have no doubt I am in for a busy summer, but I look forward to hearing from you and meeting you in the constituency when I am out and about.

The concerns raised included not only the loss of forty five full time posts for highly skilled and qualified staff, but also the impact on the environment of transporting blood from Brentwood to London and Bristol for processing before transporting it back to Brentwood for distribution to local hospitals.

Constituents who contacted me told me the staff at Brentwood Blood Centre are recognised for their high level of efficiency, to the extent I am told they often take on work for the two other centres to which their jobs are proposed to be moved. I am aware of the pressure which has been placed on staff at the Blood Centre in Brentwood over a number of years throughout the NHS Blood and Transplant’s review of its services and facilities.

It was a good meeting, and the Secretary of State has agreed to ask NHS Blood and Transplant managers for more information about the distance blood will have to travel to be processed and returned to hospitals for use, and the efficiency of staff at Brentwood compared with Colindale (North London) and Filton (Bristol).

The Secretary of State is also willing to investigate whether a workers’ cooperative may be able to operate the blood processing system more cheaply and efficiently that the current managers.

A meeting between staff and Blood Centre management is due to take place this week, and I hope my intervention with the Secretary of State for Health will enable the proposals to move blood processing from Brentwood to be reviewed in time for all possible options to be considered.

A review of the services provided by the National Blood Service three years ago identified over-capacity in both blood-processing and testing which led to blood testing being moved from Brentwood earlier this year. Now, the sixty full and part time blood processing staff have been told they may face redundancy in proposals which would move the processing of blood products from Brentwood to Colindale in North London and Filton in Bristol.

In this economic climate the loss of forty five full time jobs for highly qualified and experienced staff in Brentwood would be very disappointing. I am aware the staff feel they  lead the way in blood processing in terms of efficiency and productivity, and have often been asked to take on additional work from other sites.

The location of Brentwood too, with its road and rail links into London and up the A12 and M11 to major hospitals in Cambridge and Colchester, would seem to be an important factor too. Blood Centre staff have asked me how the National Blood Service can commit to reducing its carbon footprint when it is sending blood from donor sessions in East Anglia and Kent to London and Bristol to be processed before being driven back to Brentwood for distribution to local hospitals.

In these grim economic times, when every government department is being asked to cut costs, it is difficult to argue a case where over-capacity has been identified and measures are in place to tackle it. But I believe the staff at the Brentwood Blood Centre are a credit to the town and I will be fighting their corner every step of the way during my meeting with the Secretary of State for Health this week.

I was concerned to find many of the team now working with me at the Department for Communities and Local Government had never seen the constituency work of a Member of Parliament, so invited them to my Brentwood and Ongar constituency to show them what goes on.

Brentwood Town Hall was the first stop for my team tour, where the Council Leader, Cllr Louise McKinlay, explained some of issues faced by the council and how she and her fellow councillors go about tackling them on a day to day basis. Then a  walk down our newly refurbished High Street to Brentwood Theatre for a tour of the recently improved dressing room facilities and a chat with theatre manager Mark Reed about the theatre’s involvement in community arts.

SNAP, the charity offering support to children with special needs and their parents was next, where my civil servants heard how funding must be found to continue the charity’s work.

Lunch was a cheery and informal buffet provided by Fiona McCheyne at her farmhouse in Doddinghurst  at which everyone mingled like old friends. The tour moved on to Theatre Resource in Ongar, where who are inordinately proud of the residential accommodation which is being built at the moment and which will put Ongar on the map for arts provision for people with disabilities.

Our final stop was at Ashlyn’s Organic Farm, where the DCLG team were fascinated by the description of training for school dinner staff in the move towards healthier meals for school pupils.

Seeing something through the eyes of others is always an eye-opening experience and I was very proud of what I was able to show my team in Brentwood and Ongar. I am a very fortunate to be Member of Parliament for such a hard working and thriving community.

I enjoyed the Albert Street street party a couple of weekends ago when local people made the effort to organise a road closure, tents, a hog roast and an excellent salsa band to entertain all those who wanted to have a bit of good old-fashioned community fun.

I was in Warley again last week at the invitation of Rethink Graphics which is a print shop which provides a safe supportive work environment where people who have experienced mental health difficulties gain or regain the skills and confidence for work by working. I was very impressed by the way in which the organisation succeeds in turning people’s lives around by focussing on the solution to the difficulties experienced by people with mental health issues rather than the problem.

Letters and emails to my Westminster office continue to highlight the issues which most concern those living in the Brentwood and Ongar constituency. I am aware there is great concern among staff at the Blood Centre in Brentwood about proposals to move the processing work to Collindale in North London and Filton in Bristol with the lost of 60 full and part time jobs. I am arranging a meeting with the Secretary of State for Health about the matter and will be writing to all those who have contacted me with the outcome of the meeting when it has taken place.

It has long been a concern of many that some of the richest people in this country have been able to pay less tax than the people who clean for them. That stems from the avoidance activity that has exploited the wider gap between the rate of Capital gains Tax and the top rates of income tax. These practices are costing other taxpayers over £1 billion every year.

The Chancellor has made clear that he listened carefully to everyone’s views and considered all the options. He has said that in reforming CGT he has sought to balance the competing demands of fairness, simplicity and competitiveness.

Low and middle income savers who pay income tax at the basic rate make up over half of all capital gains taxpayers. They will continue to pay tax on their capital gains at 18 per cent. Taxpayers on higher rates will pay 28 per cent on their capital gains. This is much lower than the rise to 50 per cent that some commentators predicted.

The Annual Exempt Amount for CGT will remain at £10,100 this year and will continue to rise with inflation in future years. This means that the vast majority of people will pay no CGT at all when they sell shares or other assets. The Government’s aim is to encourage saving and responsibility, not to penalise it.

It is also important to protect the incentives to succeed in business and to innovate. So the 10 per cent CGT rate for entrepreneurs, which currently applies to the first £2 million of qualifying gains made over a lifetime, will be extended to the first £5 million of lifetime gains.

The Chancellor said he considered in great detail the options presented to him for introducing tapers or indexation allowances, and concluded that the complexity and administration involved would have been self-defeating.

I appreciate some of this will be see as better than predicted, the new rate is of course well below the level of the Thatcher Government. Some will disagree. I have no doubt my postbag will continue to reflect these views.

The previous Labour Government made the collection of rubbish a political matter by issuing a diktat that all Councils should move towards fortnightly refuse collections and I am pleased to say that it is something that Brentwood Borough Council has refused to budge on and has always insisted that weekly collections are here to stay. 

Good Councils, who were listening to what their residents were calling for rather than being dictated to by the Audit Commission’s instructions, were also threatened with being "marked down" in inspections if they did not follow the guidance to the letter.

There was a clear conspiracy by Labour ministers and Whitehall bin bullies to kill off weekly bin collections. These cuts were imposed from above with town halls left to take the blame and their reputations undermined and in tatters.

Let me be clear, however, I cannot force councils to return to collecting rubbish on a weekly basis, but I can direct the Commission to withdraw the guidance. 

Polls have shown that nearly three quarters of householders are opposed to fortnightly black bag rubbish collections.  It is just awful to think of the remains of your Sunday lunch festering for a fortnight in the winter months, let alone during the warmer weather and will only attract vermin and flies.   

I honestly believe fortnightly refuse collections were a retrograde step and I hope the measures I am taking this week will give Councils the flexibility to work with their residents’ best interests at heart. 

No matter where we live and how insular our lives become, there is always a sense of community when it is called for.  In local Government we see all types of people pulling together for a variety of reasons.  It could be to celebrate a new facility opening or to fight an unwanted planning application.  Sadly, in the last week, we have seen the communities of Cumbria grieving together as they try to come to terms with the terrible and tragic events caused by one of their own running amok with a gun that led to 12 needless losses of life and 25 injured folk.

An important part of the backbone of our communities is, of course, our local councils.  The sense of civic and community pride that exudes from Town Halls is enormous and Brentwood is no exception.  Although Brentwood Borough Council is one of the smallest councils in the country its organization of civic events is second to none with our Remembrance Parade as a perfect example.   I know that many people who have cause to attend an event or meeting at the Town Hall are always quite taken aback, in a good way, by the pomp and ceremony of the occasion. 

You only have to look at the letters page in any local paper to see what a central focus our local councils are and why they are such an integral part in making up our local communities for the good days and the not so good.

Everyone is really involved and we are in the throes of a wonderful tournament that people have looked forward to for many months and it is almost impossible not be swept along with all the enthusiasm and patriotism even if you are not a regular fan of the game.  And for those that really don’t want to switch on, there are also undeniable benefits such as quieter roads and unhindered passage around the M25!  I was in Brentwood High Street on Friday afternoon and experienced an eerie quietness as everyone had been out early to do their shopping getting home in time to watch the start of the World Cup.  The fruit stall had almost sold out of produce after a record morning sales.

On Saturday morning I opened the new Mr. Grumpy’s Sweetie Shop in Ongar High Street (although through a diary mistake I was a tad late) and guess what?  Amongst the huge array of sweets on offer, they had a sweetie especially designed for the Football World Cup!

Whoever makes it to the final, and I sincerely hope England will be one of the teams, there is no denying that the whole tournament will have been a thoroughly enjoyable and wonderfully patriotic event for so many countries.   As we all unite to indulge in the camaraderie of four weeks of football one thing is certain, no matter how much your knowledge of the beautiful game is, we will all become football experts for four weeks until the next time….

Part and parcel of our community is the reporting of local news in our local press and everyone is always delighted to see a photograph or report on something in which they have involved or read about the achievements of someone they know.  Many families have yellowing bits of newspaper charting the exploits, births, deaths and marriages of family members in times long gone.  However much the internet provides us with incident information, there is something reassuring about cutting out and keeping items and articles of interest.

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However, this very important part of our community jigsaw is under threat as we now find that local papers are being squeezed out of existence with newsrooms down to a skeleton staff after suffering redundancies due to falling advertising revenue and competition from the internet.  Another problem is the fact that local authorities often produce magazines and free sheets and I am very pleased to see that Brentwood Borough Council has discontinued its quarterly Vision magazine thus saving the Council a vast sum of money and also encouraging folk to turn to their local papers for advertising, events, news and information.

Some councils have not been as benign as Brentwood and have ruthlessly pursued an aggressive policy to silence troublesome local critics. These last few years has seen the closure of too many local newspapers.

On a national level, the new Coalition Government has announced plans to encourage investment in local papers.  The reason for this is simple, local newspapers are as important to the well being and identity of community life as the local pub or the post office - they record the ties that bind our local identity together. Without them our sense of local ownership would diminish.

But despite having a Cabinet position, I also continue in my duties as a Member of Parliament representing the constituents of Brentwood and Ongar in Parliament. As I stroll through the corridors of Westminster I see some of the new intake of MPs getting to grips with the passes, security, layout and traditions of our Parliamentary process. I can well remember my own first few weeks at Westminster: finding an office; acquiring all the equipment required to make sure letters were answered in a timely way; shocking the powers-that-be by bringing in one of the first computers onto the premises….

But away from the Westminster bubble I have been in the constituency this last week for a number of visits. I enjoyed the traditional ceremony of the “Mayor-making” at Brentwood Town Hall when outgoing Mayor Cllr Tony Sleep handed over the chains of office to Cllr David Tee. For many of the guests at the ceremony it was the first time they had seen it, and I was heartened by the number of comments I received about how much they enjoyed the occasion.

Brentwood’s Chamber of Commerce invited me to the Annual General Meeting on Thursday at Shenfield High School, where I was invited to say a few words about the merger of Shenfield High School and Sawyers Hall College before a fascinating talk about the workings of Essex County Council’s Banking on Essex project.

I’ve also had a change to catch up with the Anglo European School for a chat about its plans for the future, and what differences the coalition government will make to education in the next five years.

So, all in all, a busy week. Next week Parliament will be sitting too and I suspect there will be many new policy announcements to keep everyone busy for a while to come.

In the last seven days I have seen a Conservative Prime Minister inhabit 10 Downing Street for the first time in thirteen years; the first coalition Government formed since the Second World War; and I have kissed the hand of Her Majesty the Queen.

I was with David Cameron when it became clear the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition had been agreed, and he was to become Prime Minister. I’m not ashamed to say even I, a Yorkshireman, cried with joy.

David asked me to become the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and a Privy Counsellor, historic roles which I was honoured to accept. My fellow Privy Counsellors and I were sworn in at Buckingham Palace last Thursday at a ceremony in which I took the Oath of Office, kissed the hand of Her Majesty the Queen and received the Seals of Office.

As someone with a keen interest in the political history of our country, to receive the Seals of Office in such an historic ceremony was a great honour.

As Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government I have already made decisions which will make a difference to the lives of many people, including those in Brentwood and Ongar who have contacted me about issues such as repossession of homes.

I have asked the new Housing Minister to take a fresh look at existing Government schemes which help homeowners struggling to pay their mortgage and make sure that they offer the best deal for homeowners, as well as value for money for the taxpayer.

I know there is hard work ahead, at both national and constituency level, to ensure this coalition works, and I am thankful for the support of so many constituents who re-elected me to work for Brentwood and Ongar. I thank you for your letters and emails of congratulation and promise I will continue to be a strong and effective voice for you in Westminster.

Last Thursday’s election was extraordinary, not just for the lack of definitive national result, but also for the level of enthusiasm from everyone to come out and make their vote count.

I spent the whole of Thursday touring the constituency in my old London cab, visiting the campaign headquarters in Brentwood, Ongar, North Weald, Abridge, Ingatestone, Doddinghurst and Blackmore. I was amazed by the number of people I saw heading to the polling stations, polling cards in hand, children and babies in tow, all ready to cast their vote in this historic election.

I am told one six year old girl was so excited by the whole experience she was planning to vote twice – once in the morning with her dad, and once in the afternoon with her mum. Another child told me she wanted to vote Conservative, her sister wanted to vote Labour and the family pet was a Liberal Demo-Cat.

At the Brentwood Centre, where the Brentwood and Ongar count took place, party activists, supporters, candidates and dozens of nimble fingered counters gathered for the General Election and Borough Council election results amid an air of palpable excitement.

I was delighted to be returned as your Member of Parliament and look forward to fulfilling my election pledges to be a strong voice for you, regardless of how you voted, to hold regular advice surgeries and be available when you need help, to be open about my Parliamentary expenses, and to put the needs of Brentwood and Ongar first.

I firmly believe the National Citizen Service, set out last week by David Cameron, will do the same for the many 16 year olds I hope will take part in it in future years.

National Citizen Service will be a non-military two month summer programme for 16-year olds, involving both residential and at-home components. It will be delivered by independent charities, social enterprises and businesses. A lot of time and effort has gone into making it a reality and it should be one of the proudest legacies of a future Conservative government.

A Conservative government will set for itself this ambitious goal: that over time, all 16 year-olds will take part in NCS. We want NCS to be a rite of passage for all sixteen year olds in Britain, and a shared experience that will bring young people from different backgrounds together. NCS will promote social mixing, help the transition to adulthood and promote community engagement.

These plans have been developed over the past four and half years, and we have helped raise £2 million for, and worked with, independent charities and social enterprises to run pilot programmes in London, Wales and North West in 2006, 2008 and 2009.

I meet with sixth formers from our local secondary schools each year, and I know how motivated they can be. The National Citizen Service will help a generation of young people to appreciate what they can achieve for themselves, and by themselves.