Can they deliver? Or might Angela Rayner and team under a future Labour Government have to come up with an alternative for Labour given that the original City Deal was signed off by ministers?
Cambridge Unitaries Campaign
See Phil Rodgers’ post below.
“The campaign has been setup by Cambridgeshire residents Chris Howell, Martin Lucas-Smith and Phil Rodgers. The campaign is not aligned to any particular political party, and welcomes support from across the political spectrum, those working in or with local or central government, businesses, trade unions, residents and anyone interested in supporting better local government in Cambridgeshire through the introduction of Unitary Authorities.”
https://www.cambsunitaries.org.uk/index.php/who-are-we/
For the record, I attended one of the meetings of this group which took place after the local elections, and I agree with their aims of creating new and more empowered unitary councils better able to meet our cities’ challenges (Alternatively, they agree with my aims given I put the case to the people of Queen Edith’s before hand! 🙂 ). Chris, Martin, and Phil come from three different party political dispositions, and support (whether public or private) comes from local members of the four main political parties that are represented on Cambridge City Council. So it’s genuinely cross-party-and-non-party!
In the meantime, the GCP has a very big decision to make.
The former Chairman of Cambridgeshire County Council, and former Mayor of St Neots, Cllr Stephen Ferguson announced the news.
Phil Rodgers, columnist at the Cambridge Independent and local democracy summariser at Cambridge 105 points us to the important changes from the papers presented to the GCP Assembly.
Style Note: Senior officers at local government organisations ***need to make clear who is making the recommendation.***
Above – from p40 of the meeting papers for the GCP Board meeting for 28 Sept 2023
“It is recommended…” doesn’t state who is making the recommendation. It could have come from nowhere. The ex-civil servant in me is screaming: ***If you are the individual making the recommendation and providing the reasons for it, take ownership of it.*** Especially with this case. In my opinion this is because it clearly separates who is making the recommendation from who is being asked to approve it. Is this recommendation being driven by officers or is it being driven with a very clear political and democratic mandate?
Furthermore, I think this paper should be submitted by, or clearly counter-endorsed by the Chief Executive of the GCP, Rachel Stopard. Why? Because of the huge controversy on this decision and on this project. That’s not to say other officers are not capable of doing so. This would send a very clear message to those outside that this is coming from the very top of the permanent staff in the organisation.
“What are they recommending?”
They are asking if the Board….
“Considers whether or not the proposals are at a stage to enable recommendations to be made to the Highways & Transport Committee of the County Council (as Highways Authority) to endorse the Outline Business Case and to progress the Making Connections proposals to the Full Business Case stage.”
GCP Board meeting papers 28 Sept 2023, p40
“And are the proposals at a stage to put to the County Council?”
Only if:
- They want to see their proposals rejected by the Highways and Transport Committee of Cambridgeshire County Council, or
- The councillors on said committee in the governing joint administration of non-Conservatives want to lose the next county council election and hand power back to the Conservatives.
“Why would officers put Board Members in such a difficult position?”
Given the decisions made by The GCP Board of 2021 which I wrote about here, we were always going to come to a crunch point. This could be it. The electorates of Cambridge City, South Cambridgeshire District, and Cambridgeshire County Councils gave Labour and the Liberal Democrats the opportunity to change the direction of the entire partnership. Smarter Cambridge Transport petitioned the GCP for such a change in summer 2021 but was ignored. Ultimately when the opportunity to make such a radical change presented itself courtesy of the voters, senior councillors did not take that opportunity. That will be a conversation that future candidates and incumbent councillors restanding will have to debate with their local electorates.
When you look at the uptake of e-scooters (legal and illegal ones) you can see that Smarter Cambridge Transport got it spot on with active travel schemes. It would have been far better to have created a massively improved and upgraded network of cycleways and wider pavements given the election results.
“What happens if the proposals are either *rejected* by the The GCP Board, or *rejected* by Cambridgeshire County Council?”
Here’s one interpretation of mine – and I’m more than happy for it to be torn to bits.
The recommendation has been phrased in a way that makes it easier for the GCP Board to recommend approval.
“…[Are] the proposals are at a stage to enable recommendations to be made to the Highways & Transport Committee[?]”
To which they can say ‘Well, this is as good as they are going to be. Time to send it up to the Highways and Transport Committee”. At which point the latter will be asked to endorse the outline business case in order to make the full business case that can be voted upon later.
Which might enable some of the councillors who are supporting the proposals to argue. to their fellow councillors that they are not being asked to approve the proposals, just that ‘things can move onto the next stage for a later substantive vote. By the time there is a substantive vote on the full business case, one argument will be: ‘Well we’ve spent so much time and money on this that to abandon it now would waste all that money’. Yet Smarter Cambridge Transport questioned *at the start* whether it was sensible to spend £9million on consultants’ fees to prepare the City Access Strategy.
“The recommendations outlined above are the culmination of six years of research, public engagement and development of ideas. This workstream alone has cost over £9 million. At a day rate of £500, that’s equivalent to over 75 person-years of work, or a team of thirteen qualified, experienced professionals working full-time for six years.”
Smarter Cambridge Transport 02 Sept 2021
Is it far better to cut the losses *now* rather than continue, or does the GCP Board and senior officials want to push the whole thing to a point where county councillors will have to decide between holding their council seats or pressing on with a scheme that could easily be over-turned by a future council administration? One that would lead to years of recriminations over wasted public money with nothing to show for it. We’ve been there before with Cambridge’s transport schemes in the 1960s & early 1970s.
“Could Michael Gove come in and zap the GCP in its entirety?”
He could – and it would be something that Conservative candidates at the next general election might try to make a virtue of – even though it was their ministers and council leaders for South Cambridgeshire and Cambridgeshire County Councils in 2014 that signed off the City Deal creating the GCP in the first place.
Either way, Peter Freeman has been instructed by the Secretary of State to come up with proposals on the future of Cambridge by the end of the autumn. That means even if the GCP Board approves the recommendations, the whole thing could be stopped in its tracks by the proposals that come from Mr Freeman – the Chairman of Homes England (An Executive Agency of The Dept for Levelling Up).
The uncertainty & broken governance structures mean Labour will be asked about alternatives as a likely future government
That means local politicians will have to discuss this with Labour’s Deputy Leader Angela Rayner – or at least the team of policy advisers working for her. Having recently taken control of the portfolio and shadowing Michael Gove in the Commons, I would be surprised if the governance of Cambridge *did not* fall upon her desk as something to make a decision on before the general election. The reason being that the sums of money committed are far too great to be ignored. Furthermore, with Peterborough one of their target seats at the next general election, the issues around the governance will inevitably be asked fo their candidate Andrew Pakes in relation to the Combined Authority. Given the current barrier that has been thrown up by Peterborough Conservatives – running a minority council but wielding the veto powers in the legislation over Mayor Nik Johnson’s Local Transport and Connectivity Plan (the CPCA Board have another go at approving it on…Wednesday,) it’s not something that is going to go away.
The Liberal Democrats – with South Cambridgeshire in their top ten target seats, will also be looking to avoid taking party political hits over the GCP
The Cambridge independent reported on 07 Sept 2023 that Cllr Simon Smith (Labour – Castle) told the recent GCP Assembly that both the Liberal Democrats’ Parliamentary Candidates for South Cambridge and the new St Neots and Mid Cambs seats (Pippa Heylings & Ian Sollom respectively) opposed the congestion charging plans. Understandable if a critical mass of their electorates are telling them that this is an issue likely to decide which way they vote in the next general election.
The party political decision the two candidates will have considered is whether it is worth risking losing both parliamentary contests in an attempt to push through the polarising proposals that have no guarantee of success – whether getting the necessary approvals down the line and if so, whether they meet the predictions if built.
Given how few MPs the party has, inevitably that involved their party’s national leader, the former Energy Secretary Sir Ed Davey (someone who is more than familiar with the climate issues at stake) to intervene as he did back in March and April 2023 on visits to Ely. This was in support of an election campaign aimed at taking control of East Cambridgeshire District Council from the Conservatives. Such was the targeted defence from the Conservatives over the C-charge that the latter held on. I doubt that failure to take control of East Cambridgeshire will have escaped the notice of the Leader of the Liberal Democrats.
“So…what will happen?”
We’ll have to wait and see:
- What Michael Gove says at his party’s conference in a few weeks time
- What recommendations Peter Freeman comes up with later this autumn.
Because so much of the power rests in Whitehall, that is what will ultimately decide the fate of the GCP. For it has a ‘gateway review’ with central government coming up. If the GCP fails that gateway review, its future is at stake. And the senior officers of the GCP know this. That is why I think they have made the recommendation that they have. The stakes are nw very, very high for all involved.
Food for thought?
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