ON TUESDAY, it will be four years since I was given the opportunity to serve the people of Darlington in Westminster. These past four years have been one of national and international challenges with our exit from the EU, Covid-19, a war in Ukraine, rising inflation, cost of living, the current situation in the Middle East, together with my own party’s difficulties at Westminster.

Harold Macmillan when asked what was the greatest challenge facing politicians famously replied: “Events, dear boy, events!”.

And it remains true to this day.

Here in Darlington, I have relished the job of working for our community, and I have worked hard week in and week out, despite the “events” that have thrown us curve balls. Some people go into politics to climb the “greasy pole”, some go into it because they have a keen interest in policy, and others, just like me, do it simply because they want to be a good constituency MP.

Reviewing the past four years I am proud of what we have delivered locally. Support through Covid, support through cost of living, saving our airport, redeveloping our train station with £139m of investment, redeveloping our Rail Heritage Quarter, investing £23.3m from the Towns Fund, support for the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) developing a vaccine library and vaccine manufacturing capability, support for Cummins developing hydrogen engines, expansion at Darlington College, Carmel College and Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College, and a special school with capacity for 48 additional places.

The flagship, though, is the Darlington Economic Campus (DEC), which has already delivered 600 new jobs and is due to grow further. The DEC is an incredible project, changing the way Government works. It has its own “unstoppable momentum” and is responsible for hundreds of indirect jobs and delivering an additional £80m of spending in our local economy.

All of these investments in our town are what Levelling Up is all about. It’s not one thing but a range of things which collectively give local people real opportunities to stay local and go far. All of these things cost money and, on the money front, Darlington and its residents have received in excess of £600m of help and support. That is a record of which I am incredibly proud of.

However, whilst shiny projects and big sums of money are the sexy parts of the job, it is the hard work in the background that delivers the most job satisfaction.

I wanted to deliver a service to constituents that they had never had before: visible, engaged, supportive and responsive.

From day one, I have responded to more than 35,000 individual constituent letters and emails. I have visited almost every school – some multiple times – and have distributed more than 800,000 leaflets, newsletters, magazines and surveys. I have established interfaith and social housing roundtables, met with doctors, midwives, dentists, postal workers, bin workers and many others to understand the role these people play in our community.

The biggest privilege of the role is to meet constituents in my weekly surgery, and well over 1,000 people have done this with me since I was elected. It means I have the opportunity to help people often at the most challenging times of their lives and the biggest satisfaction is being able to resolve many of their complaints. This really is the best job in the world.

MORE COMMENT AND ANALYSIS FROM THE NORTHERN ECHO HERE