I think the reason for the long summer holidays was that it released the older children to help bring the harvests in. Then in 1980s #LostCambridge at school we were told that changing farming methods meant that having harvest festivals in October was a strange thing to have when most of the harvesting had been done by August.
So what excuse does Parliament have for such long summers? Or is it time to equalise their terms as well?
Questions to the Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Housing…
Parliament returns at 2.30pm on Monday 02 Sept – you can browse through each day of the week to see which ministers will be responding to questions from the new intake of MPs. Where it says ‘Oral Questions’ you can click on the link to find out which MPs are tabling which questions. So on Tues 03 Sept we can see that the Chancellor will be taking Qs from MPs along with her ministers – the team of ministers having divided up the questions depending on their policy responsibilities.
You can get a sense of which questions are the ones that party managers, whips, and spin doctors have written for the foot-soldiers to put to ministers. Those are the ones that are tabled by more than one MP and are word-for-word identical.
Above – note how many times in this link the word ‘Fiscal’ comes up – and then compare the questions
Also, Ed Miliband’s Great British Energy Bill gets its second reading in the Commons – which means the Energy Secretary will be asking MPs for their approval for the principles in the legislation. See here and click on the explanatory notes.
Greater Cambridge Partnership is back – as is the Combined Authority
The GCP Assembly meets at The Guildhall in Cambridge on 12 Sept 2024 – you can see the meeting papers here. On their agenda are:
- The significantly scaled-back Cambridge Eastern Access Project
- The controversial Cambridge South East Transport Project (Busway from Addenbrooke’s to the A11)
Recall under the former Combined Authority Mayor, the proposals were for a metro-underground link from Cambridge Station out to the airport site and beyond towards Bottisham.
Eight years ago back in 2016, just after the EU referendum (it was that long ago!) Cambridge City Councillors on East Area Committee were presented with these slides, the above giving some idea of what the ambition was. Their proposed location for a new railway station – on top of an old landfill site on one side of the railway line, and the Army Training Centre (owned by the Ministry of Defence) on the other was a bold move. This was before Marshall’s announced it was moving off the airport site and making it available for redevelopment.
Note prior to the 2021 Mayoral Election, the vision for 2030 for Central Cambridge was as below:
Above – you can see the full diagram here
These plans were followed up by a monster options appraisal in October 2020 – you can see the meeting papers here, with the engagement report at p271, and the options appraisal report p276.
You can’t say they weren’t imaginative, although I’m not sure how familiar with the local area the consultants were
Above – GCP papers 01 Oct 2020 p308 – LNCH = ‘Land North of Cherry Hinton – now the Springstead Development under construction.
Now, I’ve had issues with the GCP for years. Back in 2017 I looked at the report from a consultant brought in to review the partnership and their report made for painful reading for those concerned – I highlighted the problems here on my old blog. Then in 2023 I got myself on the ballot paper calling for the GCP to be abolished as part of a wider overhaul of local government in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough. That campaign is now being led by CambsUnitaries
“It’s a bit of a climbdown from the what could have become a light rail underground link to ‘Park & Ride'”
Above – GCP item 8 p5 – They are already looking at the sites for car parks between the A14 and Newmarket Road east of Fen Ditton by the Quy junction of the A14.
As things stand, there are no plans for tunnels of any sort. Just that simple assumption repeated by Transport Director Peter Blake that ‘the buses will join the existing bus network’.
Above – GCP 08 Sept 2022 Agenda Pack p65 detail – the tunnels have gone and instead the buses go into this ‘City Access’ zone that was dependent on the congestion charging model that failed to secure the necessary party political support that senior transport officers (in my view) incorrectly assumed was a given.
The controversial Cambridge South-East Access Project – CSET
I wrote about this back in 2021 shortly after the local political earthquake that put Dr Nik Johnson in charge of the Combined Authority, and Labour & LibDems in power in a joint administration with Independent councillors. I think I spent half of 2021 complaining about transport issues and the failures of councillors to stand up to senior transport officers – something that resulted in the congestion charging controversy later on down the line (I highlighted that risk in this post) that would later toxify political relations in local government on all things transport. Which is why I hope ministers come up with proposals that significantly change and improve the governance structures for our county – because the present ones are broken and the GCP has hardly any democratic legitimacy left – having been established by the Coalition Government in 2014.
The GCP’s timetable is for the County Council to submit a Transport and Works Act Order application in the autumn of 2024.
Which is a bold move given that there are county council elections coming up and this is a ***really controversial*** issue that the Tories have since U-turned on post-2021. Prior to that, they supported the principle of the proposals.
Above – GCP via South Cambs DC 11 Oct 2018 CSET item – Supporting Paper 7 at foot of table
Cambridgeshire Conservatives have every right to change their policy as a result of both local and general elections where the electorate gave them an absolute kicking
Their candidate for South Cambridgeshire, Chris Carter-Chapman announced his support for a light rail scheme at the various hustings in the run up to the general election. This change of policy wasn’t enough to hold the revamped seat for the Conservatives – Pippa Heylings MP winning that contest (constituents can contact her via her website https://www.sclibdems.org.uk/pippaheylings).
Above – expect to hear more on CSET in the run up to the Cambridgeshire County Council elections as it is the county council that has to request the approval for the proposed busway. And this will be yet another busway that won’t have solved the problem highlighted in the independent review of 2021 about the ‘last mile’.
“[The CBC proposals offer] no solution apart from the City Access program of soft measures to restrict on-street parking and reallocate road space to active travel. The assumption is that these measures will be enough to enhance bus speeds and provide more reliable journey times across the city. However, no detailed modelling of the likely impact has been conducted so it remains uncertain whether bus accessibility will improve.
“The OBC [Outline Business Case] recognises the need to access the fringe employment site at the Science Park and Cambridge BioMedical Campus and proposes a pattern of orbital bus services to serve these sites. from the Park and Ride sites at Madingley Road and Scotland Farm via the M11 and A428 as well as connections in the City Centre. These constraints remain valid for the C2C scheme and only weak remedies are proffered at this stage.”
Above – Amey (2021) pp20-21 – which included the map below
Above – the map originally from the Outline Business Case produced by consultants Steer. Most local residents could come up with far more constraints and limitations than on this map.
The map above highlights the lack of East-West connectivity from Queen’s Road. This is something I highlighted in a video back in 2017: “What happens to the busway buses when they hit Grange Road?” (I was still moaning about it five years later in this blogpost in 2022).
Now that the City Access Strategy is kaput, the GCP would be far better conceding defeat and putting what’s left of their budget behind light rail and the Cambridge Connect proposals. It has been over a decade since the Greater Cambridge City Deal was signed (you can read it here) and since that time, no construction work has started on any of the busways – they are still arguing about routes in the face of stiff and persistent opposition from residents and campaigners, many of whom want the better option of light rail that goes under the city of Cambridge – a concept adopted by the former Mayor. As I mentioned before, quite understandably the present Mayor Dr Nik Johnson was unwilling to commit to light rail *unless* ministers stated clearly that they were prepared to provide the funding for it. That was something his predecessor was unable to secure from his own party. It remains to be seen whether Transport Ministers in the Labour Government – Dr Johnson’s party, would be willing to back him financially and policy-wise for a light rail alternative. If we’re lucky, we may find out in the Autumn Spending Review.
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 BSky <- A critical mass of public policy people seem to have moved here (and we could do with more local Cambridge/Cambs people on there!)
- 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 