On Friday I spent the day in Bedlington talking to people in the community and visiting both the East Bedlington Community Centre and Bedlington Station Primary School to speak with volunteers and teachers about their views and concerns in the community over the recent years.

I paid a visit to The East Bedlington Community Centre to visit their volunteer ran community food bank that works to ensure that those struggling in and around Bedlington get the support that they need and make sure they can put food on the table during a difficult time.

Sadly, initiatives like these ran purely on a volunteer basis and dependent on donations from individuals and local businesses have become all too common. There simply is not the support from the government that is needed for people in towns like Bedlington which have been long forgotten by successive administrations in Number 10 Downing Street.

It is not just community centre’s in Bedlington who are running food banks. Bedlington Station Primary School, who I visited after the community centre, also run their own food bank to ensure parents of children who are struggling get the support they need to look after their children the best they can. The reality is that most schools in more deprived areas of Wansbeck and all over the country are having to run their own food banks, a situation that would have been unthinkable back in 2010 when the Conservative Party took power.

I spoke to teachers at the school who were completely exasperated by the current education system and the government’s attitude towards fixing it. The bottom line is that these teachers, and therefore their students, are being failed by a system that does not work and by those who refuse to change it. They are overworked, underfunded, and under immense pressure to achieve the unachievable. Our education system needs an overhaul or else we will simply be unable to recruit and retain the teachers needed to provide our children with a quality education.

This is the same story for practically all of our public institutions, from the NHS, the police force, the postal service, railways, and many more. Bedlington, like elsewhere in Wansbeck and the wider country, is full of people willing to go above and beyond to support their community and the people in it, yet they continue to be let down again and again by the government.