Creating and voting through transport plans were supposed to be one of the main reasons for creating combined authorities in the first place. Yet today’s CPCA Board Meeting demonstrated yet again that the institution was broken from the start.
It was item 6 of today’s Combined Authority Board Meeting. You can watch the meeting of this item from 16m30s here and come to your own conclusions. Otherwise, feel free to read on!
Councillor Bridget Smith (LibDems – Gamlingay), the Leader of South Cambridgeshire District Council was scathing.
Above – not pictured in the tweet: Cllr Bridget Smith
The choice faced by the Board Members (council leaders of the component local councils with the exception of Cllr Anna Smith who stays on despite being ousted from the leadership of Cambridge City Council by Cllr Mike Davey a few weeks back) was either approve or delay.
Above – yet another delay to the LTCP.
Last week I warned that the draft Local Transport & Connectivity Plan demonstrated that the Combined Authority was not fit for purpose as an institution. I didn’t expect senior councillors from across Cambridgeshire & Peterborough to demonstrate this so publicly at today’s CPCA Board Meeting.
Although my focus was on how convoluted the bus franchising process is, the Leader of Peterborough City Council, Cllr Wayne Fitzgerald (running a minority Conservative administration) put his council’s and party group’s position in crystal clear terms.
“I am not for congestion charging, I am not for Low traffic neighbourhoods, 15 minute cities, 20 minute cities, whatever you want to call them. I have reservations on workplace charging. Nobody at officer level has had a conversation with me as a politician about Peterborough signing up to this LTCP [Local Transport & Connectivity Plan]”
Cllr Wayne Fitzgerald of Peterborough City Council, 31 May 2023
And that, in a nutshell is why the attempt by George Osborne and his fellow ministers to cram Cambridge and Peterborough into the same artificial political unit whose financing, structures, systems and controls had not been properly thought through, is a failure.
Mayor Dr Nik Johnson is in no position to override the concerns from the Conservative group
I was also reminded by Clare King, a former Cambridge City Councillor that Peterborough City Council has a veto – as does Cambridgeshire County Council.
Above – from p30 of the CPCA Constitution March 2023
“So we have an impasse?”
Yep.
“How do we get out of it?”
They can try to come up with something but remember that ministers designed the CPCA on the assumption that it would be managed by Conservative-led councils and a Conservative-led Greater Cambridge Partnership. The electorate clearly had other ideas and has demonstrated just how broken the model is by returning councils that politically cannot work with each other because they have fundamentally different visions for the future of transport in the face of the climate emergency. In principle, the structures of public administration should be able to function effectively irrespective of which political party is in power.
Officers tried to get round the impasse by creating separate sections of the LTCP for each local council area bar Cambridge which is combined with South Cambridgeshire (thus further supporting the principle of a unitary council for the city irrespective of boundaries given so many shared functions). Yet as the meeting demonstrated, this wasn’t enough for the Conservative group of councillors. Given that the Conservative leaders of Peterborough City, East Cambridgeshire District and Fenland District councils were returned as the largest parties (and in the latter two cases, with absolute majorities) in the recent local elections, they have every right to stand firm on the mandate their electorates gave them. My point is that their majorities in the northern part of our county stand in contrast to their meagre presence in the south of the county.
Above – the party-political balance following the 2021 Cambridgeshire County Council elections when the Conservatives surprisingly lost control of the County Council for the first time since the 1990s.
Noting the results above, you can draw a rough line east-west creating two separate unitary councils – one based around Cambridge as a sub-regional centre, and one around Peterborough as well. I won’t go into the detail as that’s in other posts. Alternatively you can watch my summary from the Queen Edith’s hustings below.
Above – That’s Dusk the Town Owl staring back at you – inspired by Dusk the town owl on the Cambridge Guildhall Clock. (See if you can spot her next time you are in Market Square!)
Above – Antony Carpen (me!) with two options from the history books on what could be negotiation starting points for new unitary councils for Cambridgeshire & Peterborough. From the Queen Edith’s Hustings, 28 Apr 2023
Time to table a public question to call for the abolition of the CPCA and ask ministers to set in motion the process of a major local government overhaul for Cambridgeshire & Peterborough?
That is an option for the next CPCA Board Meeting on 26 July 2023. There is also the option of setting up a petition to the CPCA here for anyone who has a following or who is part of a group who can get one going. But getting people to sign petitions on local government reform is not easy – as the one to Parliament calling for such an overhaul is showing. (As of 31 May 2023).
I don’t feel like there’s much more to say given how demonstrably dysfunctional the CPCA is turning out to be. If you feel similar, email your councillors and MP with your thoughts – and ask them for their observations and what their party’s policy is. Because we cannot go into a general election without having started a county-wide debate on how we are governed.
Food for thought?
If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to:
- Follow me on Twitter
- Like my Facebook page
- Consider a small donation to help fund my continued research and reporting on local democracy in and around Cambridge.
The Cambridge Town Owl 