DELIVERING LOCALLY
Ian Pearson is working to ensure we have excellence in our local schools, a first class health service, effective policing – and we run an economy that enables local businesses to prosper and living standards to rise.
He has successfully campaigned for extra support for the area to deliver on promises to cut class sizes, reduce hospital waiting lists and modernise public services.
Major spending on education has seen local schools rebuilt or refurbished. As the buildings improve, so does the performance of our children.
More resources – £407 million to Dudley Health Authority in 2007-08 compared with just £123 million in 1996/7 – are improving local healthcare, delivered from 21 st century buildings.
New police powers and more police based locally are helping to tackle crime.
Youth unemployment is down over 80% thanks to the New Deal
He has been a keen supporter of the Dudley Infracare LIFT project, which is set to deliver a £26.5m health and social care centre in Brierley Hill, a key element in the plan to make the town a strategic centre in the Black Country.
Ian believes in getting involved in the local community. He is an active supporter of the campaign to build a new leisure centre in Brierley Hill and is closely involved in the fight to prevent expansion of Wolverhampton Airport.
He is chairman of the Redhouse Trust, which was established to look after the Redhouse Cone at Wordsley. It has been restored and developed as a tourist attraction and is also home to a community of glass companies and innovative studios. Ian was instrumental in getting the project off the ground and guiding it through to completion.