You may have noticed this column has been missing for the past few weeks. That’s because the editors didn’t want to be seen to be favouring any political party during the county council elections. So all of us who were standing for election last month – whatever our colours - had a break.

Happily on May 6 my party was given another majority on the county council – we hold 39 of the 60 seats – and I am pleased but humbled to have been re-elected to the leadership.
Naturally I am very grateful to those who voted for me and my fellow Conservatives. But I want to thank everyone who voted in what were difficult circumstances this year and I would echo my pledge after previous elections that we will do our very best for all our residents.

The great thing about elections is they force you to reflect on what you’ve achieved but also what you want to do for the future and why people should entrust you with their precious vote.
For the past year so much of Devon County Council’s focus has been on working with our partners to fight the virus, to support the most vulnerable and help those who’ve been most badly hit economically – at the same time as continuing to provide our normal services.
But we’ve also been looking to the future and putting in place as many measures as possible to drive our economic recovery.

Our county has been very resilient and we’ve managed to record some of the lowest rates of infection nationally. Now the vaccination programme is successfully rolling out, we really must increase our efforts to regenerate our economy and promote the strongest possible recovery.
We have ambitious plans for a cleaner, Greener Devon with a thriving economy.

I’ve said many times that the government can’t create jobs but it can provide the right climate for business to create jobs.
So we’ve invested £4 million in the Future Skills Centre at Exeter Airport to help train our young people – and anyone else wanting to change career or re-skill – so that they can find good, well-paid jobs in the careers of the future.
We’ve supported work hubs where small businesses or start-ups can hire office space and equipment. There are currently 15, including at Bicton, Honiton, Sidmouth and Cullompton, and we’re planning at least seven more.
We’ve set aside £6.2 million over the next two years to provide support to help businesses regenerate and our economy recover.
We will be supporting tourism, hospitality and local producers as our economy fully re-opens.
We've launched a major Made in Devon marketing campaign to support and promote county businesses to local people and visitors alike.
This is already supporting food producers and agriculture and will back tourism and hospitality as the restrictions are fully lifted.
We are backing the roll-out of fast broadband for rural Devon. An £80million pound programme is underway in Devon and Somerset which will help to halt the digital divide between rural and urban communities in our county.
And we are very mindful we have to do all this and get the recovery going while keeping our promise to reduce carbon emissions.
Across the county council, we've cut our carbon footprint by almost half and we're on target to become net-zero carbon by 2030.

I will be writing more over the coming weeks about how we are going to appoint a Citizen’s Panel to advise on the measures we all need to be taking to cut our carbon emissions.
But for now I’m delighted to be delivering for Devon once again.