Opinion: "My budget is about breathing space for families and fresh hope for the future"

My budget is not simply about Treasury figures. It is about household bills, local businesses, high streets, homes and opportunities for young people. I want the places we live to be the places we love. That means making a difference to everyday life, while giving our town breathing space and confidence that the future can be better than the past.

The most immediate help is a £100 energy payment, paid directly into bank accounts in January for around 41,990 households in Council Tax Bands A to D in Rawmarsh and Conisbrough. One payment cannot fix everything, so I am also removing standing charges on gas bills – something many constituents have raised with me.

I have seen what local employers can achieve. At Denaby-based Senior Architectural Systems, innovation goes hand in hand with its Better Learners, Better Workers programme. I have also listened to traders on our high streets, including in Wath before the Budget.

So I have heard that our businesses need breathing space too. New Small Business Rates Relief thresholds mean around 1,572 eligible businesses in Rotherham and Doncaster – mainly in retail, hospitality and leisure - will pay no business rates at all.

New apprenticeship funding will help employers offer more young people the chance to earn while they learn – something apprentices at local engineering firm Equans spoke to me about directly.

Housing matters just as much. Nearly £250 million in Government funding will support more than 2,200 new homes in South Yorkshire. And from early 2027, the national Your First Home scheme will help buyers onto the housing ladder with deposits of just 2.5 per cent.

I am also delivering a major transfer of financial power from Westminster. By the end of the decade, 100 per cent of business rates will be retained locally. From 2027, mayors including South Yorkshire's Oliver Coppard will receive a share of business rates and from 2028, a share of income tax receipts too.

That matters because decisions about jobs, transport and regeneration should be shaped by the people who know our area best. These changes mean more money raised locally can be invested locally, supported by Good Growth Funds and an extra £150 million for local capacity and capability in 2027–28. We have already seen the importance of local decision-making in moves towards public acquisition of Speciality Steel UK and the deal to bring Doncaster Airport into public ownership.

For ex-miners and their families, I have guaranteed that every penny of the pension fund surplus from now on will go to the miners - this ends the deep sense of injustice about surplus sharing that has been hardwired into the Mineworkers Pension Scheme for more than 20 years.

Nobody in Westminster has a monopoly on good ideas. They come from business owners facing barriers to expansion, charities supporting families and residents who know what their towns need.

A Budget is a beginning, not the end of the conversation. That is why I will keep listening. This week I will meet employers, community organisations and regeneration leaders, including people recognised at the Barnsley and Rotherham Chamber of Commerce Annual Business Awards, and take their views back to the Treasury.

Growth cannot happen elsewhere and simply trickle down to places like Rotherham and Doncaster. It must mean thriving businesses, stronger high streets, new industries and real opportunities for young people here at home.   That’s what I’ve always supported and what I’m proud to be delivering for the country as  whole, but especially for our part of the world.

• John Healey MP
  Member of Parliament for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough