We all know that Hitchin and the villages are great places to live – my young family and I feel thoroughly lucky to be able to call this corner of Hertfordshire home.

This month I kicked off my summer event schedule at the Hitchin Beer and Cider Festival.

For those who haven’t been – this is a fantastic annual event put on by the North Hertfordshire Campaign for Real Ale, bringing a huge number of people together from our community. It was great to see so many of you there and I hope to see many more of you throughout the summer.

I also joined Hitchin charity Growing Resilience in Teens for a fundraising event at Hitchin Town Hall earlier this month.

They do some brilliant work supporting young people in our community and I would encourage everyone to check them out and give them some support.

The local Scouts also work hard to support local young people. Earlier this year I helped them secure funding to offer more opportunities to children in Hitchin – and it was great to join some of their members to find out more about their plans to use it to attend the World Scout Jamboree!

We all know that Hitchin is a great place to shop – and this month it was great to see so many Hitchin businesses crowned the best in our region in the Muddy Stiletto Awards.

I want to make Hitchin an even better place to spend time (and money!) and so this month my monthly survey is about the future of our High Street. Do share your views at https://www.bimafolami.co.uk/monthly-surveys.

We’ve had lots of good news this month – firstly, having long campaigned for a new specialist cancer hospital for our region, I’m delighted that the Government has included the new Cambridge Cancer Hospital in its New Hospitals Programme. Hot on the heels of that news, we’ve had £10m of new investment in facilities at the Lister.

And in more good news – new stats show crime is down 13 per cent across Hertfordshire since 2019, with record numbers of police officers on the streets.

I’ll keep working hard to keep Hitchin and the villages as somewhere we can all be proud to call home.