2017 has arrived with quite a full in-tray: locally, issues such as the congestion on the A34, the continued campaign to re-open Grove station and the need to secure continued investment in science and technology post-Brexit will take centre stage. This year will also see us take the formal step to begin leaving the European Union – an issue that will dominate the agenda in the House of Commons.

But the first issue I want to address in my first column in 2017 is our local health services: just days before Christmas, the Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group slipped out a document known by the unlikely acronym of the BOB STP.

This stands for the Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West Sustainability and Transformation Plan, and its inelegant title is perhaps appropriate for something that is experiencing a difficult birth.

Put simply, the BOB STP will set the agenda for the NHS locally for the next five years. It covers three counties, seven clinical commissioning groups, 14 councils and six NHS Trusts, 1.8 million people and £2.5 billion in funding.

In Oxfordshire, it will focus on maternity and children's services, learning disability, mental health, autism, specialist advice and diagnostics and urgent and primary care.

I am very unhappy with how the process is being undertaken.

There is very little information given to the public, and as a local MP even I am excluded from some key decisions.

Locally, the constant delays to publishing anything meaningful is having a severe impact: as is well-known, Wantage community hospital has lost a lot of services because of health fears. The longer the process takes, the more difficult it will be to restore those services.

Equally worryingly, we learned in December that Faringdon Health Centre and the Wantage GP services (Newbury and Church Street) had failed in a bid to secure additional capital funding to expand their premises.

At the moment, our GPs are finding it difficult to cope, and they urgently need to expand to cater for a growing population, and to take on new services to provide care closer to the community.

Without this extra funding, our local health services will be put under ever greater strain.

The situation has become very urgent, and I will be meeting local NHS chiefs shortly to try and get from them a clear timeline for the publication of the full and final version of the BOB STP so that we can all have a say in how our health services are developed over the next few years.

I will also be seeking meeting with health ministers to discuss the failed capital bids for GP surgeries, so that I can understand why they were turned down, and what we need to do to ensure success in the future.

Nothing is more important than the local health services we all depend on, and which are very much a cherished part of our community.

It is depressing to start the New Year with such a downbeat assessment of what is happening, but I hope the news will get better in the coming months.