Andy Munns
Victoria Charleston puts access to NHS GPs and Dentists at the top of her list of priorities for Salisbury.
That, along with housing, roads, and transport around the city, are really important issues that need tackling.
When asked about her big priorities for Salisbury, she said, “So this is a tough question because I have a whacking great big shopping list. But if I have to say three, the thing that comes up the most, and I knock on doors all year round, this isn’t just an election thing for me.
“I go out every Saturday. I leave husband and children at home and come home to chaos and I knock on doors and talk to people.
“And the biggest thing is health. Over and over again. It’s people’s access to their GP, it’s trying to get into the hospital. It’s trying to get home for care. It’s a lack of dentists, all these things.
“So, whilst it’s absolutely a national Liberal Democrat policy and priority, it’s got to be a local one as well because the stories I hear over and over again make it local.
“So I want to work here with our fantastic GP practices, with our fantastic hospital, with our care system to try and see if we can unlock some of these problems.
“The second one is housing, and it comes up again over and over again. Whether you are a young person with a young family who needs to try and live somewhere, whether you’re a nurse at the hospital, you know, you cannot find anything that’s available to rent.
“And whether you are trying to staff up the playhouse because you’ve got a big show on and you’ve got nowhere to put the team who want to come and work for you for a short period of time.
“We’ve got a serious lack of housing, and if you go to Hanham, where you go to Laverstock, there are houses being built there, but they’re not the houses that people want or where they want them.
“So again, my party has a big push on putting priorities and planning policy back into the hands of communities. Communities know best what they want and what they need. And that’s what I’d like to do in Salisbury, is make sure we build the houses that our community needs and where we want them.
“My third one has got to be traffic and travel around the constituency.
“And obviously, in Salisbury, everybody has a problem with the amount of time it takes to go around the Ring Road factors. As I’m walking over here, really, you can already see the traffic up to St Paul’s roundabout completely backed up.
“If you are out in the villages as well, you’re either isolated because there is nothing if you don’t have a car or if you do try to use the bus.
“For example, in Alderbury, you can come into Salisbury for your evening at 7:00. You can’t get home again. So the whole system really needs unsticking.”
Listen to the full interview below, and you can find out more about the Liberal Democrat manifesto here – https://www.libdems.org.uk/manifesto
Salisbury Radio will conduct and release interviews with the candidates standing in the Salisbury constituency. Hear what they had to say about important local and national issues in the lead-up to the General Election.
Tune into Salisbury Radio’s Election Night Special with all the news from 10 pm on Thursday 4th July.
