Long-term investments in services, rather than temporary 'sticking plaster' solutions, are the priority for Dawlish's newly-elected Liberal Democrat county councillor, Martin Wrigley.

He says he'll be campaigning for the county council to put money into Dawlish where it's needed, and to allocate sufficient resources to fix some of Devon's most serious and long-running problems – including children's services, and the state of the roads.

Cllr Wrigley beat his Conservative rival for the Dawlish seat by just 102 votes; he received 1,920, while Noel Nickless achieved 1,818.

He told Dawlish Nub News: "I'm absolutely delighted, it's both an honour and humbling to be trusted by the people of Dawlish to look after their interests, and there is so much to be done.

"My biggest priority is to be that strong voice for Dawlish, to point out all the things that need to be done and not to take no for an answer. It's too easy for a Conservative-controlled authority to say, 'no we're not going to spend any money on anything', but it's a false economy and you have to make sure that things are fixed."

A good example of what he means is the huge pothole that recently appeared, and rapidly worsened, on the junction near Cockwood Bridge. It was filled in on Monday, but Cllr Wrigley says it's a temporary patch that won't last.

"What I'm pushing for is, how do we get this fixed for the longer term, a proper bit of surface put down there? Because unless we do that, the next frost or heavy rainstorm, or big lorry that knocks it, or a hot summer's day when the tarmac melts, it will start falling apart again and within months or a year we'll have that pothole there again - and you can see it's already been patched multiple times.

"Too many places along our roads we're just applying temporary patches and not fixing them properly and that's a false economy – it costs a lot more to send a temporary team out to fix the pothole than it does to do the work properly and have the road surface maintained."

It's this short-term view, he said, that is also perpetuating the 'crisis' in children's services – another of his priority areas.

"Children's services are not funded sufficiently - people are doing their best, but we are shipping out of Devon something like 200 children at any given time for care placements and that's ridiculous. You're getting young children separated from their extended families and it must feel to them as if they're in prison because they've been sent away.

"That's just down to lack of investment and short-term and no vision, we need to get Devon to invest in facilities that can be used. It's the same as investing in infrastructure – it's a big capital investment, but it saves you in the operating budget.

"That's what's happening with children's services, they've not invested in the services sufficiently in placements in volume of care that's needed and are paying for expensive care elsewhere, so it's over-running in costs and not providing a good service - again, false economies."

Adult social care, and saving community hospitals

Cllr Wrigley is also impatient for some progress on the issue of adult social care. "We're waiting for the Government to come up with their promised fix on that, we were promised that they had one in the bag ready to go – it is just a mess. We've had things like the Dilnot Report (a new funding model drawn up under the coalition government) and a number of cross-party proposals that were nixed by one government or another, but we need some sort of agreement on how we're going to do it, because it's a crisis that's only going to get worse."

The committee structure of the new-look county council is still under discussion, and Cllr Wrigley is still looking into the possibilities: "There's a wide range of new committees, it's been a fascinating trawl through to see what the various committees are and what areas of responsibility they cover.

"But one I'm particularly interested in is the one that will be overseeing local hospitals, because I'm convinced that we need to fight to keep them. Teignmouth Hospital is still under threat. One of the things the Covid pandemic should have taught is that we need flexibility - and every time we see a change in the NHS they are desperately trying to go for efficiency and trying to build future performance around current working models, and all those got thrown out of the window in the last year.

"To me it is madness to get rid of local hospitals that you can use to change around the way you do things. Streamlining all your – for lack of a better term -capital assets against your current operational model is again short-sighted and foolish."

Summing up his approach to his new role as county councillor, he said: "I believe councils have the ability and the resources to do good, and to invest in our local infrastructure and invest in our local community, and I believe it's all about communities and making sure we continue to build and support thriving local communities, and enable people to connect better together.

"Councils can do that because they've got not only the assets but the over-riding remit in areas to make sure those things happen, and I want to make sure that we maximise the good that councils can do through using that ability and actually investing in our local people and our local community."