For lone rangers like me it’s something to keep us out of trouble – and keep councillors and senior officers on their toes!
Bullseye prize music if you will please!
Cambridge City Council
- At The Guildhall you’ll have had notice of Planning and Transport Scrutiny Committee already – get your PQs in!
- For Environment and Community Scrutiny, you can see a list of community organisations and how much money they have received. Plus control of dogs, noise, Storey’s Field at Eddington, and even plant-based catering. The food, not the caterers
- For Housing Scrutiny Committee on 24 Jan, the papers are out early! See what Cambridge Acorn asked about slum landlords and what the City Council agreed to do in response.
- Local environmentalists take on another Cambridge College over development vs protecting a nature spot at Planning Committee on 11 Jan – which starts in under 24 hours time at the time of posting!
Cambridgeshire County Council
- At New Shire Hall the Children’s & Young People’s Committee has to decide on the future of Stibbington – the centre where generations of children (myself included in the early 1990s) learnt about nature, stays or closes. It’s not looking good.
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority
Several meetings this month, some of which have happened. The ones looming include:
- Audit and Governance which will overhaul the constitution and the functioning of the committees
- Housing – which is a short update on programmes outside of Cambridge by the looks of it
- Transport and Infrastructure – which has a number of ‘big ticket items’ on there:
Above – the bigger the number in Kb, the more likely the item is a substantial/substantive report for consideration. So browse through them carefully!
The Greater Cambridge Partnership
Little to see in the calendar until the consultation results are published – and that won’t be until the summer due to the tens of thousands of responses.
South Cambridgeshire District Council
Councillors there scrutinise the emerging Greater Cambridge Local Plan on 12 Jan, but little else published until 19th Jan when audit & governance, and budget scrutiny take place – and no papers have been published as of 10 Jan.
Huntingdonshire District Council
Steady as she goes by the looks of it – with small grants funding awards being announced.
East Cambridgeshire District Council
It looks like all of the fun stuff will be happening from mid February – nothing of note in their calendar so far. Tense? Perhaps with their full council election coming up in four months time. Could the Conservatives lose control of yet another Cambridgeshire district level council in what was once a blue fortress?
Fenland District Council
Fenland’s Overview & Scrutiny Committee will be examining their business plan for 2023/24.
Above – have a read in item 6 of the meeting papers
They also have full council elections but prospects of the ruling Conservative Group being removed by the electorate look remote – not least because of the lack of presence of an organised opposition, unlike in East Cambridgeshire next door.
Peterborough City Council
The largest city in our part of the world has had some well-documented financial issues of late – the combination of long term and cumulative decisions by both central government and local Conservative-led councils. You can see the meetings calendar here. As a Unitary Council it is separate from Cambridgeshire County Council and the districts within Cambridgeshire – a decision made in the late 1990s. You can read the Local Government Review of 1995 here, that recommended this – and what the other local councils said in the consultation.
And that’s your update!
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The Cambridge Town Owl 