Milestone: Office of Harrogate and Knaresborough MP Tom Gordon celebrates 20,000th piece of casework for constituents

Mr Gordon said the passing of this milestone follows a skyrocketing, in general, of requests to MP’s offices after the pandemic.

His constituency team now take on thousands of individual cases a year, representing residents to dozens of institutions, companies, and government departments.

The Harrogate and Knaresborough Lib Dem MP is required to spend much of his week on the ground in London when the Parliament is sitting - voting on laws, speaking in debates and scrutinising legislation, while a full team of caseworkers ensure responses to the scores of weekly requests.

When a resident hits a wall with a government department, the council, the NHS, a landlord or a utility company, and cannot get anywhere on their own, they can bring the problem to Tom.

The office then takes it up on their behalf, chases the organisation involved and pushes for an answer or resolution.

Tom Gordon’s Senior Caseworker, Chris Howden, said: “Behind every one of these 20,000 cases is a constituent who turned to us for help.

“We are a small team, but we are proud of how many people we have been able to support.”

Recent successes for the office include:

Making sure a widow received her husband’s pension in full.

Supporting a victim of a workplace GDPR breach.

Securing a permanent home for and reuniting a mother with her children living in a caravan without electricity or running water.

Tom Gordon MP said he was now keen for even more residents to know his office is there to help them.

"Twenty thousand cases mean 20,000 times somebody in Harrogate or Knaresborough needed a person in their corner.

“Some of it changes lives, like keeping a family in their home.

"Some of it is a smaller thing that nobody else would have picked up.

“We treat all of it as important, because to the person sitting in front of us it is.

"I am proud of my team for their hard work.”