These could be of interest to existing residents beyond the neighbouring wards – especially when it comes to our existing civic and social infrastructure gaps.
You can see the timetable below
Above – from South Cambridgeshire District Council
The ones delivered in partnership with Cambridge City Council are:
- Cambridge East Community Forum
- North West and West Community Forum
- North East Cambridge Community Forum
To get a feel for some of the issues to do with the expansion of Cambridge, some of you may want to go along to the gatherings and see who else is there, as well as listening to the questions they have to raise. For those of you in campaign groups or local political parties, it might be a case of asking one of your members to go along and feed back on the issues raised.
This also reminded me of the bingo board produced by LocalityUK
Above – by Locality UK here – what is your neighbourhood / area / town / city missing?
The same organisation produced a new report on local healthcare provision
Above – you can browse through the report here
One way to look at some of the recommendations in the above report is to ask whether Cambridge (or your village/town/city) is doing what sounds like common sense to most people – for example co-locating public services in the same building or facility. That does not automatically mean things will get better. I recall in my early civil service days how fragmented things felt even though multiple central government functions were based in the same building. It’s like we worked in parallel worlds.
Given the above…
“The Public Health team at Cambridgeshire County Council and Peterborough City Council is working towards making Cambridgeshire and Peterborough a healthier, more supportive, and inclusive environment for everyone.”
Cambridgeshire County Council Public Health Survey 2024
Got anything to tell them? Please fill in the survey.
***It all seems like too much hard work!***
Well…Michael Sheen did say community action wasn’t easy.
“You have to learn how to listen.
Michael Sheen, 2017
It’s not just a question of standing there with a clipboard and asking questions with the right look on your face.
You have to show up.
And stay around.
You have to let go of your assumptions and your biases and your agendas and your prejudices.
It’s really hard.
Speak to the people who are on the frontline of working in communities.
The ones doing the really tough work of giving support where it is desperately needed.
Where their resources are getting smaller all the time but the need for what they’re doing is getting greater every day.
Ask them about listening.
Because they’re really good at it.
But they’re also the ones who’ll say that they’re not being listened to.“
…and having a fragmented city doesn’t make things any easier
From a consultation that I cannot find the root page for, Cambridge City Council produced a list of residents’ associations and community groups from what could have been years ago (although sometime after 2012 which was when the Police & Crime Commissioner was invented).
Above – the list goes into four pages
Inevitably one of the gaps with residents associations in terms of coverage is young people. That’s made all the more harder by how austerity hits the funding for youth groups. I lived it through my teenage years in 1990s Cambridge, and now I am watching history repeat itself. The report from last autumn’s Cambridge East Forum (See the Q&A from Oct 2023) indicates this.
Above – Oct 2023 Questions and Answers, p3
To get an idea of the roots of the issues, have a look at the map below:
Above – Abbey Ward, Cambridge on the left, and the new Marleigh development on the right. Via GMaps here
As several of you may know, Abbey Ward is, and historically has been one of the most economically-deprived parts of Cambridge. Recently (24 Feb 2024) the Cambridge News wrote about proposals to overhaul the ward. Furthermore, the city council is holding an open event at Christ the Redeemer Church, Newmarket Road, Cambridge CB5 8RS from 17:45 on Thurs 14 March 2024 – details here.
A reminder on how to organise local election debates
See Chris Rand’s guide here, and also the guidance from the Electoral Commission here.
One easy alternative to the set piece debates is to book a community room in an existing community centre or library, invite candidates to be there, and have it as a ‘drop in’ for local residents. (I’d like to have one that spans Coleridge & Queen Edith’s wards, held in a venue on the ward boundary – just to see if multi-ward events can work). The challenges as always involve a combination of apathy and publicity. Our social media feeds have become clogged up with ads’n’spam that those wanting to put on events feel they have to shout louder online and that only adds to the noise. Hence more people and organisations are looking at better ways of offline notices.
It’s also something that could host display boards of things that other towns and cities have that might be suitable to recreate in/around Cambridge given the construction that’s already happening. Because I’m as bad as anyone when it comes to moaning about stuff – especially public art. (Recall the much-criticised ‘golden river bank’ from a couple of years ago) It would be great to see some suggestions coming from the public that are inspired by things that they have seen and work well for towns and cities elsewhere. One that appeared in one of my social media feeds was this pebble chime.
Food for thought?
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Below: Could you host a local public discussion?
During WWII many discussion guides were printed such as this one by the WEA – digitised here, dating from 1943
The Cambridge Town Owl 