This week members of your Focus Team were at the Lib Dem conference in Brighton, helping to make party policy on a whole range of issues including animal welfare standards, mental health provision, housing, plastic pollution and jobs and businesses.

When it came to plans for giving more power back to communities, your Focus Team successfully added a proposal to make Combined Authorities, like our West of England Combined Authority (WECA), more representative. Currently just four people, three Conservatives and one Labour, sit on WECA, stitching up decisions that affect over 900,000 people. In the last local elections, nearly 280,000 voted for parties not represented. That’s no way to make good decisions.