IT'S been a busy month since my last column – not least because I’ve had the chance to get out and about in the constituency as part of my annual Volunteering Week.

This is something I have done every autumn since I was first being elected in 2015, and gives me an opportunity to support some of our fantastic voluntary organisations, charities and public services and raise awareness of the work volunteers do all year round.

This year, I returned to help some of the really great teams at Russells Hall Hospital and Brierley Hill Baby Bank who are now based in Kingswinford, and also joined volunteers in South Staffordshire – in parts of the new constituency that I hadn’t represented until July’s election.

From spending a morning with the volunteers at the Edward Marsh Centre in Kinver or the Friends of Wombrook in Wombourne, to helping out at the Compton Care charity shop in Codsall and then joining the brilliantly dedicated (and now award-winning) Wall Heath in Bloom volunteers, it was a week that once again reaffirmed to me just how much of a difference volunteers make right across our community.

It was a pleasure to once again host a coffee morning at my office in Wordsley, as part of Macmillan’s World’s Biggest Coffee Morning, where we managed to raise more than £356 to support the work of this fantastic charity. Thank you to all of the local businesses, councillors and members of the public who supported the event and helped us to raise so much for this brilliant cause. This year’s Conservative Party Conference was also back in Birmingham. There was rightly no shying away from the result of the General Election in July where the nation sent a clear message that my party must do better if we are to be given the trust of the British people again.

In that spirit, I was encouraged by the openness of the discussion and the determination of everyone in the party, from top to bottom, to make sure we pick the right leader and prove ourselves to be worthy of government again.

Finally, I am pleased to confirm that we now have a date set for this year’s Jobs and Skills Fair which will take place on Friday November 8. Given the change in the constituency boundaries, I have had to look at a different venue for this year and am pleased to confirm that Wombourne High School and Leisure Centre have agreed to host us.

I will be announcing further details of the event over the next few weeks, but in the meantime, if you are a local employer across Dudley, the Black Country or South Staffordshire and have jobs available, please get in touch with my office as we would love to have you there on the day.

If you would like to keep up to date with my local campaigns and some of the issues that I am working on locally, you can sign up to my newsletter at mikewood.mp