The responsibility for the fate of Shire Hall on Castle Hill resides at the ironically-named Conservative Party – both the county and national parties.
See the press release from Cambridgeshire County Council here
TL/DR? You can:
- Email your county councillor with your views (For/against/neutral)
- Table a public question at Cambridgeshire County Council’s Full Council meeting on Fri 13 Feb 2024 (See the county council’s guidance on asking public questions here)
- Launch a petition on the county council’s website
Some of you may have seen the headline.
Unfortunate timing given the interview with city councillor Thornburrow who is the executive councillor for town planning in Cambridge, but has no say in the future of the old Shire Hall site because of our system of local government separating city and county.
The area of land/buildings being disposed of is shown from the property advert below.
- The property listing from French multinational Banque Nationale de Paris
- The property listing from Property Link
It’s a long story, but to summarise:
- Video of Debate and vote on moving Cambridgeshire County Council out of Cambridge to Alconbury, 16 May 2018.
- Video of public question to councillors on a heritage option (put by myself) on how any hotel option might be tied to supporting an expanded Museum of Cambridge, 18 May 2018
- Exploring the purpose of an extended/expanded Museum of Cambridge, 20 Sept 2018 (Lost Cambridge)
- Controversial Station redevelopment firm Brookgate named as preferred bidder for the site, 18 May 2019
- Making the case for expanding the Museum of Cambridge given recent significant archival discoveries 07 Jan 2023
- Brookgate withdraws from the negotiations, 20 Nov 2023
- Assets and Procurement Committee, 28 Nov 2023 – I table my public question.
- Cambridge City Council Strategy and Resources Cttee debates Cambridge Civic Quarter – more public questions (incl one from me here – see video) 29 Jan 2024
- Ministers plan making cash-strapped councils ‘sell assets’, Guardian 30 Jan 2024
- House of Commons Select Committee on LUHC covering Housing and Local Government declares: “There is an out-of-control financial crisis in local councils across England“. 01 Feb 2024
- County Council announces its preference to sell Shire Hall as a freehold, 02 Feb 2024
The only option I can see is for an independent historic trust to be founded to try and acquire the site to develop it along joint commercial and heritage lines. I tried to make the case for that back in July 2018 but was turned down by Cambridge City Council. Would Cambridge have had the chance had that fund been established? Would Cambridge have had the chance if a single unitary council (for example as Cambs Unitaries Campaign are exploring) had been established, taking control of local government property assets? I don’t know. I can only speculate.
Part of me is tempted to convene a meeting at the Cambridge Central Library and/or elsewhere to see how people feel about the proposed sale – and perhaps more importantly what actions anyone is prepared to take beyond sending angry correspondence to enfeebled local councillors lacking the powers or resources to prevent this from happening.
Yet as is clear, the Political roots of all of this are in Westminster and the series of decisions taken both by Conservative Chancellors of the Exchequer, and by the then Conservative-led county council.
What the general election candidates have to say about this…will be interesting to hear. But that requires you, the electorate, to ask them the questions at the public debates. Noting the case from former Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett in the House of Lords about arts and heritage:
Another former local resident felt similar, making a speech in Cambridge in 1910 about Democracy and the Arts. His name? Rupert Brooke. You can read a transcript of his speech here, courtesy of Florence Ada Keynes’ younger son, Sir Geoffrey the physician and bookworm.
Food for thought?
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Below: A detail showing the old boundaries of Cambridgeshire County Council prior to its merger with the Isle of Ely Council in the 1960s. This was the area of responsibility the county council had when it purchased the Castle Hill site from the Home Office following the closure of the old County Gaol.
The Cambridge Town Owl 