I remember five years ago, before I was elected, backing exciting plans to rebuild Wiltshire College in Chippenham – only for everyone’s hopes to be dashed when the last government’s college building programme was abandoned after they lost control of the budget.

So at Prime Minister’s Questions last week, I enlisted the Prime Minister’s support for Wiltshire College’s renewed push for a new £21 million campus in Chippenham, to provide more vocational training and apprenticeships. A state-of-the-art campus in Chippenham would be a fantastic investment in our young people, so I asked him to back the College’s bid to the Skills Funding Agency.

The Prime Minister, seeing a similar need in his own constituency, replied “It’s this government that’s now putting the money in to see that expansion and that improvement and put better quality colleges into place, and I’m sure that can happen in Wiltshire as well as Witney.”

His words are a welcome boost for Wiltshire College’s bid to get the Government funding it needs for the project to go ahead, so that local students have the best chance to gain the workplace skills employers demand.

With the recent high profile trips taken to China by ministers, I asked the Foreign Secretary about the opportunities for British businesses that have arisen from them.

I also asked the Energy Secretary to help people who live away from the gas grid to get a better deal from heating oil and LPG suppliers, by removing obstacles that prevent them from switching.

Later in the week, I raised with ministers the challenge of extending superfast broadband to rural areas, including parts of Wiltshire. I pointed out that residents in a few of our smaller villages may still have to wait years before they have access to superfast internet through fixed-line broadband, and suggested that we could find ways for them to benefit sooner from the high speeds to be offered by the 4G mobile spectrum.

Back in Wiltshire, I visited Trowbridge where I spoke at an event marking the 75th anniversary of Relate, the relationship counselling charity.

After constituency surgeries in Corsham and Melksham last weekend, my next surgeries are at The Pound arts centre in Corsham on Friday, between 10-11.30am; at my office in Avonbridge House, Chippenham on Wednesday from 6-7.30pm and at Bradford on Avon library on Saturday, November 16 from 10-11.30am.