The Cambridge Pledge – Innovate Cambridge’s response to the chronic problems our city and county face.

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The concept of live-tweeting seems to have died out as realtime social media content from the conference at the Guildhall was non-existent. So I’ll keep this bit short.

It is also why reading the publications is ever so important – such as the delivering the strategy document paper here.

Greater Cambridge Impact – social impact investment funding

This also got a mention here, and they have produced their own report via Cambridge City Council here (scroll to the end)

The Cambridge Pledge

I’ve been very critical of the processes leading up to this – not least because as with so many interventions the lack of substantial involvement of the people and communities they want to help has been striking.

That said, I hope the Cambridge Pledge makes a real difference – not just to the communities involved but also to those committing the sums involved. I hope it breaks down some of the social barriers and that they learn something about the people who make up our city that they were not previously aware of. To the extent that it changes their corporate cultures.

The five areas they will focus on:

  • Disadvantaged young people (school/ skills)
  • Children in care
  • Care-experienced young people
  • Families in poverty and crisis
  • People who are homeless

“The Cambridge Pledge is a charity raising funds through donations and pledges”

Above – Cambridge Pledge (2024) p174

The target is for participating individuals and firms to pledge 5% of what look like capital gains/returns on investment

For more details…

Note that previous generations of Cambridge civic champions have set a high standard. Such as one of the hardest men in Cambridge who has a sports centre named after him. His name? Kelsey Kerridge.

Above – Alderman Kelsey Kerridge interviewed by Deryck Harvey in 1972 from the Cambridgeshire Collection. From the family firm of builders, Kerridge reached county standard in nearly a dozen sports in his younger days – note the size of those fists (!)

And if anyone else needed persuading, here’s Sir David Robinson. His donation in the 1980s resulted in the construction of the maternity hospital next to Addenbrooke’s which he named after his mother, Rosie. (Hence ‘The Rosie’)

In the meantime, a host of meeting papers have been published by local councils and the Combined Authority. You can find them via their event calendars:

And finally…

In case you missed it, see the video of the Greater Cambridge Local Plan update on the Biomedical Campus here

Note the interventions in the first Q&A session on the proposed CSET Busway from Stapleford Parish Council – a reminder to decision-makers that they need to bring the people that make up our city and county with them. Because the electorate has already humiliated the Greater Cambridge Partnership over its now abandoned Road User Charging (and their ‘Making Connections’ project) – something that was utterly avoidable.

The Innovate Cambridge community would do well to note the lessons learnt on that one – in particular working through the proposals that residents come up with to solve problems that they already live with (and solutions that they will have to live with too) rather than trying to find the most convenient way to dismiss them or out-manoeuvre them. The damage done to local democracy and the abuse that too many councillors got as a result of that episode really was not worth it, and senior transport officers should take that on board for future projects – and feed it back into their professional circles regarding culture changes.

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: