It’s always a pleasure to support the hard-working local hospices, military families and good causes across St Austell and Newquay.

But it feels particularly special ahead of Christmas, as government announces £100-million will be injected into adult and children’s hospices before April 2026, with another £25-million planned for the following financial year.

In parallel, Labour is buying back all the military housing and replacing tired homes plagued by damp and mould with accommodation befitting of our services families – in a deal that will save taxpayers £290-million a year on rent alone.

Finally, after intense lobbying from Labour MPs, we’re thrilled to have secured £43-million Shared Prosperity Funding for the constituency – one of the biggest awards within the country. We have also secured £35.5-million in extra spending power for the council next year through the Local Government Funding Settlement.

However, without voting for change in May, we may well see our good money thrown after bad in the New Year.

The local elections in May must be a value for Cornish taxpayers' money election. But value for money doesn't always mean that the public sector must do less. Sometimes, it just means doing things better, informed by sound operational management, economics, pricing, and incentives.

Unfortunately, we all know too well that they are doing all of this at the cost of much-needed local services.

I’m also concerned that the Council is fundamentally unserious in its attempt to provide sufficient scrutiny over the way our hard-fought Shared Prosperity Funding is spent. I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to many key stakeholders in Mevagissey, surrounding their much-needed Harbour regeneration project. This project is key to the survival of the village, with the risk of the harbour wall’s failure placing a possible future bill of tens of millions on the coffers of the Council. Even though the project to protect

Mevagissey from the sea for the foreseeable future would cost just a fraction of that, this project has been put too far down the pecking order.

And that’s before you get to the potential for this money being used to unlock our long-term economic potential. I’m not talking loans to spaceports here. I’m talking about helping local people get a foothold in the supply chains emerging around our most promising industries.

Instead, the council has gone straight to projects which have already had money, continuing the cycle of begging bowl politics I’ve called on government to break in Cornwall.

As we celebrate the festive period and move into the new year, I’ll be continuing my work with local and national colleagues to cast Cornwall Council’s frippery into the economic history books – something I personally hope to find in my Christmas stocking.

With local elections across Cornwall on May 1, we can’t let four more years of Conservative rule continue to taint Cornwall. And we cannot let unelected officers continue to call the shots over a limping council leadership.

It’s time for a change of guard.

Noah Law, Labour MP St Austell and Newquay